“Porpoises (/ˈpɔːrpəsɪz/) are small dolphin-like cetaceans classified under the family Phocoenidae. Although similar in appearance to dolphins, they are more closely related to narwhals and belugas than to the true dolphins.”
And they are all more closely related to each other than to any other cetaceans. There's a cladogram showing the relationships between all of them: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacea
@@richdiddens4059 dolphins _are_ whales, which means that saying "orcas are not whales but...dolphins" is like saying "humans are not mammals but apes".
before you save the princess... have you ever been involved in a accident from a clumsy squire? have you ever been injured while fighting an orc? You may be eligible for compensation...
I've only been watching for a couple days and he does appear "blush" prone. He admitted as much. Love Jess' confidence and her willingness to yield Rob's observation when appropriate. That's takes a lot of self awareness.
I would totally subscribe to a Words Unraveled After Dark series. Poor Rob's abashedness was hilarious. Almost as hilarious as the definition of rantillion.
Finnish has elokuu and marraskuu, literally livemoon and deadmoon. Finnish doesn't use three-letter abbreviations for months, but if it did, mar would be a quite different month than it is in English, French, and Spanish.
"Also, another word is "Endday", that we don't use anymore, although you can kinda guess what it means😊" -Me: It's night, right? Because at the end of the day it's night? Why isn't that pleasant? Rob: "It is the day of your death😁" -Me: Oh☹️
My first guess was "evening" ... Following this line of thought, it matches lovely with the common (though wrong) interpretation of Ragnarök as "dusk of the gods".
You two are really great together, you let each other speak, you're interested in what the other person has to say - I love to see it. Someone needs to commission an etymology TV show and have you guys front it.
How about an episode discussing the multitude of words meaning "a random assortment?" For instance: gallimaufry, salmagundi, hodgepodge, mishmash, charivari, melange, olio, potpourri, farrago, congeries, bricolage, goulash, pastiche, collage, slumgullion, succotash, gumbo, ragbag, dog's breakfast. The list is in itself a gallimaufry of strange words ("gallimaufry" being my favorite). The etymology of some of them is obvious (with food references prominent), but others are very obscure.
A salmagundi is a meat salad. Not the kind where the meat is made into salad, like chicken salad, but the easier kind where larger pieces of recently cooked meat are laid on top of the lettuce. By extension (or derision?) salmagundi came to mean a mess.
You have solved a mystery. In the Mummers Play (a traditional Christmastide street theatre) that I've performed many times, the quack Doctor character, when asked what he can cure says this: "All kinds of diseases, just as my little physic pleases. The ips, pips, pops, palsy and the gout. The pains within and the pains without. The mollygrubs, the gollygrubs and all kinds of rantantiorious little things you can think of. " [Herga Mummers Play, based on several collected frafments of old plays from the Harrow, Middx, area]
@@cynicaldodgyknees6248 no, he actively discouraged me against it. Cheap quartz was happening, keeping better time than those marvellous old machines, and he decided that the future for mechanical timepieces was looking very bleak. It's a shame, but he wasn't wrong: Almost everyone uses their phone as a watch these days, and public clocks (that are kept maintained) scarcely exist any more. I love public clocks! Every major city should have a signature chime IMO.
Mulligrubs was a kids show on tv here in Australia about 25 years 🤔 ago. As soon as I saw the title of this episode the theme song jumped into my head.
In Swedish a porpoise is tumlare. In Norwegian spider is edderkop. Porpoise in German is Schweinswal, pig whale, and the Norwegian/Danish marsvin, sea pig. That old word for squirrel sounds like Swedish ekorre, as in the song "Ekorren satt i granen", the squirrel sat in the Christmas tree
There may be an official ruling somewhere and I'm just plain wrong, but I would consider squirrelled to be two syllables; either squirr-elled or perhaps squir-relled.
most dictionaries of American English show the schwa sound before the ell as optional/occasional, making it speaker's choice how many sillybulls you make it.
Stertorous and eructation are words very commonly used in veterinary medicine. Many of the brachycephalic breeds (think English and French bulldogs) have stertorous breathing due to their short and narrow noses. And eructation is what ruminants do by belching up a small bolus of food (or cud) to chew it before swallowing it again.
Interesting! "Messeems" is the exact equivalent of the Quebec french "me semble" pronounced "messemb'" when the French expression is: "Il me semble". Archaic probably as are many of our expressions.
Bilbowright > Bilbo = a type of sworth made with metal from the Basque city of BILBO (in the Basque language) or Bilbao (in the Spanish language). It's the city where I'm from. And near by there used to be some iron mines with the strongest iron in Europe (because it has hematite) which was the reason why British engineers made a Steel factory in the city, thus bringing along the way with them the first football (soccer) team of the Basque Country and even of the Iberian peninsula: Athletic Club of the city of Bilbo-Bilbao.
Gah- first time I ever heard of Bilbao was back in 1982 - when England played a World Cup game there... Bryan Robson scored a super fast goal - against The France) - Had an Naranjito mug as a kid too. Well done in the Euros by the way!
Nice, thanks. Ironically, many Basques that use the name of Bilbo don't consider themselves as French nor Spanish , and claim for their Basque national Football team to be able to play in international competitions, like Wales, Scotlan and a such, but the EU state of Spain keeps vetoing it. 😂😂
But also, I believe - bilboes - were leg-irons on the poop decks of sailing ships (in about the 17th century) for locking up (and punishing) miscreant ship's officers.
Giraffe is one of my favorite animal names in Chinese - it’s 长颈鹿 (chang jing lu) which literally means “long neck deer”. I was a Chinese major in my undergrad (and lived in China for many years), and I just love Chinese animal names because they’re just very visually descriptive. Of course you have the pandas - xiong mao (literally “bear cat”), and because the giant panda (da xiong mao - big bear cat) and red/small/lesser panda (xiao xiong mao - small bear cat) have similar coloring, they are both given the same name. Then a raccoon (cousin of the red panda) is a huan xiong - washing bear. Or a moose is a tuo lu (camel deer), which is also very apt. Anyway, I know it’s an English podcast, but thought you might enjoy these in case you see this comment! Also, love the podcast!
I grew up with the word catarrh. We would use this word in our family when we had sinus issues. We would say "I have that catarrh taste or catarrh smell." My grandma was born in 1889, my parents were born in 1915 and 1918 and I was born in 1963. I so go out in the world, and no one has heard of this word. A coworker a few years ago found it in Wikipedia and it has to do with sinus which the term they used back then. I finally felt validated. My family also used the term schlech or schleck which meant we didn't eat properly. But I can't find any evidence of it. BTW it was fun watching Rob turn red. As if he was getting sunburned before our eyes.
Catarrhal fever is a disease of cattle that causes a severe upper respiratory infection and LOTS of mucous nasal discharge. I believe the catarrh refers to the mucous and discharge.
I grew up with catarrh as well. Suffered from it a lot in my childhood. Turns out I have a lactose intolerance. After I was weaned from the bottle 🍼 I wouldn't drink milk for my mother, then later I wouldn't eat butter. So naturally, as a baby I was avoiding things that would cause symptoms.
You really brushed past this, but I think it's a really interesting point that a lot of people don't understand. I think it was only earlier this year...maybe late last year, that I learnt the real reason behind the months having the wrong numbers. Most people seem to believe it's because of the _addition_ of July and August for Julius and Augustus Caesar. But in actuality July and August are just _renamings_ of existing months that were _correctly_ numbered after 5 and 6, and the numbers are wrong because, as you say, they moved the start of the year back from March to January.
Scottish Gaelic still has a glimpse of the older meanings in the months. September/An t-Sultain is “the fattening time”; hinting at the abundance of harvest. A few relate to the old festivals but most describe the month well, like December/An Dùbhlachd, which means “blackness”. Check them out!
The year still ended in December, what we now call January and February was just the time between the years. Nobody was doing anything, so you didn't need to be able to name specific dates. I wish we could bring that back!
For Rob: I think the German word Eichhörnchen is fairly easy to explain. Eiche is an oak tree, as you said. =chen is a diminutive ending and as always with =chen endings makes the word neuter. Horn means lots of things amongst which is, well, horn. Consider then a red squirrel (the grey ones are American invaders and can be disregarded). They have tufts around their ears which look a bit like wispy horns. So Eichhörnchen is a little horned thing that lives in an oak tree. Simples!
...which brings to mind the Bavarian "Oachkatzerlschwoaf".... (oak kitten tail...) as squirrels are known as Oachkatzerl (oak kittens) there. Something of a tongue twister. We have also (in our family!) helvetisized squirrel to "Squirrli" after a family member had difficulty with the word! (adding the Swiss-German diminutive "-li"). One of the reasons I like this particular part is that as a very young child growing up bilingually, I told British people around me that squirrel was too hard to say and that Eichhörnchen was easier... I think they begged to differ LOL
@@Woeschhuesli good! There is another Hochdeutsch equivalent - Eichkätzchen - an oak kitten, because of the tail. So the Schweizerdeutsch term is akin to that - with the other diminutive of course.
@@johnfenn3188 Yes, Oachkatzerl in Bavarian dialect, as I said, not Swiss German, no doubt refers to Eichkätzchen… In Swiss-German it‘s usually just the typical diminutive Eichhörnli.
'afterblismed' - Perfect: I needed a word for a native passionflower (Passiflora aurantia) here in Queensland where the petals change from a virginal white when it first opens to red after pollination as the seed capsule swells, and afterblismed (after blossomed?) is more elegant than preggers. Also, on the Monoceros front, there is a very ordinary 'winery' here called 'Old Fat Unicorn' with an image of a rhinoceros on the label. As the rhinoceros pictured is of the two-horned variety, the marketeer who dreamt it up seems to have been rather oblivious.
The Woodwrights's Shop was a popular Public Television show that ran for 37 years. A master carpenter named Roy Underhill demonstrated traditional (pre-electric) tools and methods of crafting all sorts of wooden products. Still available on the internet, highly recommended.
I loved that TV show! Before electric power tools, people used tools that were powered by manually generated motion (such as Roy's wood-turning lathe), water wheel, windmill, or animal-drawn turnstile (bull, donkey, horse).
The clockmaker being called an horologer reminds me of something my sister and I have been doing for a long while as an in-joke where we'll be discussing some random topic and arrive at a point or factoid about it where we've reached the limits of our knowledge of the topic, so we'll take the topic and tack on "-ologist" to the end and say either we're not one of those, or you need to talk to someone who is. "I dunno- talk to an ice-ologist" or "But what do I know, I'm not an dogologist."
You corrected some misinformation for me. I had been told that the reason that *Sept*ember through *Dec*ember seemed to be incorrectly numbered was that Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus inserted months for themselves in the middle of the calendar, offsetting the subsequent four months. I had to look it up, because I had never heard an alternate explanation. Yours is, of course, correct. I'm definitely embarrassed not to have known this before, since some of my master's work was on the history of the calendar (though I was admittedly focused on the astronomical phenomena measured and not on the actual names).
July and August might not have been renamed had Quintilus and Sextilus been called Quintember and Sextember instead. On other hand it's probably for the best as otherwise Rob would be blushing the whole next month if it weren't named August.
I remember being entertained as a child by a performance of "Taradiddle Tales", an anthology of amusing sketches with a peculiar name... which I now understand meant that they were *untrue* stories.
In Dutch we still use miljard as a thousand million. Old English was a lot closer to Dutch before the French influence (thx William :p) made it what it is today.
@@Woeschhuesliyes, I was just coming to say this as well. I've been living in Germany for decades and when I was learning the language the difference between million milliard billion billiard etc really threw me. Interestingly enough English language voice to text doesn't know the word milliard or trilliard, only billiard as the pool ball game.
Welcome back, it's great to see you again! I'm pretty certain most of European countries are still using Miliard as 1 000 000 000, it's only English speakers who use Bilion for it :)
@@WordsUnravelled "Milliard used to be called "billion" in french in the past. Maybe that's why? Now, billion means what you call "trillion" in english.
@@Ellie-wl3rw Simple to derive these: After each such word ending in "-ion" (million, billion, trillion, ...) you insert an extra level word where you replace the "-ion" ending with "-iard" (milliard, billiard, trilliard, ...). All of these are spelled the same in German but will be capitalized (like all German nouns) and -- as a little hint -- they are all of the feminine gender (thus "die Million", "die Milliarde", "die Billion", ...). But you will rarely use these words beyond "Milliarde" (billion/milliard) in everyday language.
Funny in English Gabber means who never stops talking. In the Netherlands it's know for style of electronic music hardcore techno from the 90's. But the word gabber comes from an Amsterdam Yiddish slang, based on the Hebrew chaver meaning "mate" or "friend".
Back in the 1970's, I met the Queensland Railways horologist. Keeping trains on time was very important, and there were super-accurate pendulum clocks located in Brisbane, suburban railway stations and in main stations throughout the state. Keeping them running accurately was vital.
The master pendulum clocks sent a master signal over the telegraph lines to each station to synchronise the clocks at all the stations. GPS eliminated the need for the wired signals by providing a millisecond accurate reference.
Ettercap is still used as a name for spider in Northeastern Scotland, but unfortunately is now completely out of use among anybody younger than maybe 70-80 years old.
I'm mid 70s, and I too have noticed not only words dying while unfamiliar vernacular arise, but subtle drifts in the pronunciation of even the familiar. The emphasis on what 'feels' like the wrong syllables. Also, I was never fond of contractions, as I was taught these should be confined to those times when abbreviations were used. I can scarce tolerate the new fad of the feebleminded in not bothering to even use the apostrophe to inform the reader that you are hurrying to the point. Soon we will return to that path already trodden, and confine ourselves to grunts and gestures. And I have a finger for that!
"Ambulance chaser" is the type of lawyer who takes on the cases of people who might file personal injury cases. I'm not sure what the word might be for someone who seeks out money that way and gets injured themselves, but it's definitely a recognizable type of person. Questmonger is a fine name for it.
As recently as 1975, Steeleye Span were singing "all around my hat I shall wear the green willow...for a twelvemonth and a day ". Nice to see Rob mention that there is an actual numerical quantity (10,000) for"myriad" - meseems not many people realise that. On older job titles, many of my ancestors were listed on census forms as cordwainers. It's interesting that -ster tends to denote a feminine form, but "sempster" is the masculine form of "seamstress"
Oh, right! That song popped into my head immediately upon hearing the word Twelvemonth. I was too busy listening to Jess and Rob to follow my bewildered brain to the roots of the song in which that line occurs.
In Dutch, "overmorgen" and "eergisteren", are still very much in everyday use. In fact, every time I watch videos like this I realise how much closer English and Dutch used to be.
Per Wikipedia: Porpoises (/ˈpɔːrpəsɪz/) are small dolphin-like cetaceans classified under the family Phocoenidae. Although similar in appearance to dolphins, they are more closely related to narwhals and belugas than to the true dolphins. There are eight extant species of porpoise, all among the smallest of the toothed whales. Porpoises are distinguished from dolphins by their flattened, spade-shaped teeth distinct from the conical teeth of dolphins, and lack of a pronounced beak, although some dolphins (e.g. Hector's dolphin) also lack a pronounced beak.
As a 70's Aussie teenager growing up in Melbourne, there was a slang term called "Ball-tearer" we all used for something good, great or exceptional & it could be applied equally to someone, an object or an occurrence, "He's a ball-tearer of a bloke", "That was a ball-tearer of a dance", The latest song from AC/DC is a ball-tearer", etc...all of which sounded just a bit like the old term "Balter"...I've no idea if there's any form of relationship between the two but when I heard "Balter" it immediately reminded me of the slang term from my youth.
If "Baxter" used to mean "Baker who is a woman", does that mean that in the past, surnames were inherited from the woman's side? How would that become a surname otherwise?
I've read some speculation around this, with a few suggestions: unmarried women professionals with children might pass the trade name down to their children, or that perhaps a brewster might pass the trade name to those she taught the trade even as the ending was losing its sense of gender. - Jess
Jactitation of marriage is still a legal term of art. If not, I at least remember reading about it in law school 15 years ago. It describes the "false declaration that one is married to a specified person."
I have mulligrubs used a lot in Appalachia in recent times. I have also used "hullabaloo" a lot. I had a interactive fantasy bed time tale called the land of Hullaballoo. I encouraged the kids to use their imagination of things they could do and adventures they can have in dreamland. You mentioning the word reminded me of the ongoing tale. It would get more fanciful as time went on. Trish who was fond of sweets to a fault usually imagined some adventure she could go on to consume as many as possible. Harold imagined adventures with dinosaurs and I can't recall what the other two imagined. Hullabaloo is the magical world of dreams, where anything is possible. There is a place for hullabaloo, it is in your dreams.
Not a particularly old word, but "voluntold" is one I recently became aware of. When you've been voluntold, someone has either volunteered your services without your consent or assigned you a task themselves. It's generally used in a humorous fashion.
"palter" is an archaic word worth an etymological probe. As in Macbeth's: "And be these juggling fiends no more believed, That palter with us in a double sense"
Saturnight reminds me of the German Sonnabend, which is used in some regions for Saturday. Sonnabend is a combination of Sonntag = Sunday and abend = night / evening, so it's "the night before Sunday", like Saturnight is the night before Saturday.
Porposie is of latin origin via the old French word "pourpois" (porcopiscus, pig-fish). But strangely the French name of this animal nowadays, "marsouin", have an old Norse origin (via the Normans or via Dutch) which used to mean... sea-pig
I shall not remain silent as Rob gives us his facial expression regarding making an episode about gaming lingo. Pardon me but that would be an excellent episode.
Fun fact: a seamstress was also slang for a prostitute. In Dutch seamstress is naaister. Naaien is slang for 'doing the deed'. There has to be a link here.
We have the same in Afrikaans, but the word is naai for both sewing and doing the deed. I have a CD from a band called Die Naaimasjiene which literally means The Sewing Machines, but there is an obvious double entendre.
And of course the Seamstresses’ Guild in Ankh Morpork, usually mentioned with an embarrassed clearing of the throat - “they call themselves seamstresses (hem, hem)”.
@@WayneKitchingI find Afrikaans to be a very fascinating language, almost like a Time Capsule of Old Dutch, of course well it basically is, but it's so interesting to compare how the languages have changed and also remained identical over centuries
Since "stound" was used for hour, then is something that is astounding something that captivates us for a long time, like about an hour? I have no idea, but I can tell you what would truly be astounding, and that would be if Rob or Jess could somehow comment on this query. Gracias in advance, fellow flashgamers!
Please do a segment exclusively on Old English job titles. Not only are they fascinating of themselves, but are used by genealogists to differentiate between people with the same name. I have used words like: cordwainer (leather finisher), hosier (stocking maker), hellier (tile roofer) and whitesmith (metal worker specializing in pewter) to prove I had the correct person.
The difference between milliard vs billion is not just those two words, but between two entire naming systems, namely 'long vs short scale.' In the long scale, all names ending in -llion are based on the etymologically implied powers of million, with billion being 1 000 000^2, trillion being 1 000 000^3 and so on, with the intermediate -lliards simply being the smaller -llion x 1 000. The short scale system is simply -llion every x 1000. And yes, the names ALL fall out of order once you really start comparing the two.
There is or was a fishmarket in Billingsgate in London where the women that worked there would use foul and obscene language. They were referred to as "fishmongers."
People from the North East say I'm gangyam..I am walking / going home. The Perishers are a decades old comic strip in the Daily Mirror newspaper. Two dog characters are Old Boot and B.H.Calcutta ( failed.) Their conversations often use the phrase " Tish, tosh and taradiddle." I've used this phrase for 60 years when dismissing what someone says as " a load of old tripe."
I use to hear foofarah quite a bit but not much any more. The generation that used has passed away. Many words and letter writing skills of the past are gone.
I legit love this channel. You guys are so infectious with your genuine interest and wholesome personas. I have yet to see a video from you guys where I didn't learn something totally new and interesting.
"I'll see you effing soon" :D I'm sure I'm not the first to mention this, but Jess has a habit of looking off to the right, whereas Rob is always looking at the camera
Re 'Squirrelled' being the longest single-syllable word in the English Language, could you perhaps touch on Halfpennysworth - which has an historic alternate pronunciation (despite the spelling) of 'Haipths' - a single syllable, where the spelling would be even longer than Squirrelled - as in 'May I have a "haipths" of boiled sweets?'. Admittedly since the death of the Halfpenny in 1983 and inflation, the need for the word and it's pronunciation has become somewhat archaic... But am I wrong?
@@WordsUnravelled What I am really curious about is examples of words where the spelling and pronunciations have diverged so much as to be practically unrecognisable, e.g. boatswain & the pronunciation 'bosun'. Or nounds like Greenwich pronounced "Gren'ich" -- of which there are literally dozens of place-name examples in London. Love the vidoes!
@@schubertuk Isn't a lot of the reason for this that spelling was standardised with the invention of the printing press but the literacy of the people came much later and so the pronunciation continued to evolve after the spelling was fixed.
@@johnhockenhull2819 possibly! I'm no expert! It may also be a factor of time (purely my curiosity at work here). I would be curious whether the US has developed any pronunciations that have started to significantly deviate from the spellings.
I could listen to you both all day long. I actually listened to the audio podcast earlier today and now watched the video and the video makes the words seem clearer (for a non-native speaker). Thanks for the content.
36:24 Jactation: Back when I was in my Anesthesiology residency I was reading a very old description of inducing anesthesia. I think the phrase went something like: "administer 100% nitrous oxide until the jactations occur". In this usage it referred essentially to a seizure or, at least, to a certain amount of large muscle "twitchiness". It was a clinical sign that a certain 'stage' (depth) of anesthesia had occurred but also that the patient was hypoxic. Time to add some oxygen. Ah, the good old days.
I agree. "Cattycorner" is etymologically "quatre"+"corner", so "cattywampus" could be "at a 45° angle to where it should be", if only I knew what "wampus" means there.
I agree, a synonym perhaps for off-kilter. Cattywampus being a Ruckus that is off kilter, where as catty corner being a diagonal in relation to also fits
I'm surprised that 'sennight' was not mentioned when talking of calendar terms. It was the old way of saying a week ie. seven nights. Love these deep dives into old language. Slang or cant is fascinating. Thanks Rob and Jess.
As a child in Australia in the 1970s, a mulligrubber was a ball bowled low or along the ground in cricket. Bankers still use the term ‘yard’ (for milliard) for large financial positions.
Growing up going to Catholic grade school, the nuns would teach us very short prayers to say aloud (like "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph"). The nuns would call those "ejaculations "!
Goodness I haven't thought about such ejaculations ("Glory Be!" was another) since about 1989. Thanks. I have, however, just read every novel of the crime writer Patricia Wentworth (d 1961), and a fair bit of Dame Ngaio Marsh (d 1982). Their characters are ejaculating at each other all the time - usually in ("Never! You cannot mean it!") surprise. One of my work colleagues (admittedly a pompous blowhard) would ask quite regularly at meetings in the 1990s: "May I interject with an ejaculation at this juncture?" We all got the joke, but it was a very tired one by the time I left that workplace.
"Ejaculation" refers to a spontaneous word or phrase. I, too, went to Catholic school in the late '50's and the 1960's and heard it used in that context. This was long before I heard it used in the biological sense.
Not sure about the "little acorn". Many rodents are called Hörnchen (Eichhörnchen, Streifenhörnchen, Sandhörnchen), even their whole family is named accordingly. Weorna itself sounds close enough to Hörnchen when enough spirit is involved.
After listening to this and other episodes of Words Unravelled, I have a request for at lease part of a future episode: a discussion of something, which many of us find particularly annoying, that has crept into our speech, particularly or most noticeably it seems, that of young women - “vocal fry.” Where did it come from, the mechanics of it, and what therapies there are for eliminating it.
I thought it was interesting that one of my great-great-grandmothers, contrary to most women of the time who were listed as "at home" gave her profession as "mid-wife" on I think the 1850 US census.
I being a big Tolkien fan was delighted when i moved to Norway and found out that Norwegian for spider is ederkopp I just subscribed to this fascinating stuff.
Very good episode. Love all the info Some off the words you mentioned look like Italian sounding to me A billion is un miliardo in Italian, clock is orologio, clockmaker is orologiaio Out on a tangent here, a questmonger in Italian is un leguleio or Azzeccagarbugli. The latter comes from a character in Manzoni's Promessi sposi while the former means opportunistic hypocrite cowtowing to the powerful
“Porpoises (/ˈpɔːrpəsɪz/) are small dolphin-like cetaceans classified under the family Phocoenidae. Although similar in appearance to dolphins, they are more closely related to narwhals and belugas than to the true dolphins.”
Which brings us back to unicorns...
(I love the binomial name of the Narwhal: Monodon monoceros, one tooth, one horn.)
And they are all more closely related to each other than to any other cetaceans. There's a cladogram showing the relationships between all of them: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacea
And orcas are really not whales but giant dolphins.
@@richdiddens4059 Indeed. The misnomer "killer whale" is inverted as they were originally "whale killers".
@@richdiddens4059 dolphins _are_ whales, which means that saying "orcas are not whales but...dolphins" is like saying "humans are not mammals but apes".
"Questmonger" sounds like one of those NPCs that sends you off on ridiculous errands.
Quests! Fresh Quests, get your quests here! Freshly caught this morning, they're practically wriggling! Come get your quests!
@@sogghartha Give it to us raw and wriggling, you keep nasty chips.
before you save the princess... have you ever been involved in a accident from a clumsy squire? have you ever been injured while fighting an orc? You may be eligible for compensation...
Raids, Quests and Missions! Alive, alive-O!
So how does the fact that porpoise is a mammal a dolphin is a fish.,..
I see that Rob is easily "encrimsoned" by some of the words that Jess brings up.
Rob's family name is Watts, so it's no wonder his face lights up so brightly when he blushes!
"Bereddened" even :D
@@richardvanholst 😂
Even Jess was looking a little reddened!
I've only been watching for a couple days and he does appear "blush" prone. He admitted as much. Love Jess' confidence and her willingness to yield Rob's observation when appropriate. That's takes a lot of self awareness.
I would totally subscribe to a Words Unraveled After Dark series. Poor Rob's abashedness was hilarious. Almost as hilarious as the definition of rantillion.
My friend from Glasgow,she called a scarecrow a 'tattybogle'.Great word.
❤. Makes sense. They are normally made with old clothes (or rags - which are generally tatty).
I don’t think quickmonth derives from being fast or nimble, but rather being alive, or growing, it being the first real month of spring.
Finnish has elokuu and marraskuu, literally livemoon and deadmoon. Finnish doesn't use three-letter abbreviations for months, but if it did, mar would be a quite different month than it is in English, French, and Spanish.
When quickmonth was mentioned the film Highlander II: The Quickening (1991) came to mind.
As in the saying: the quick and the dead.
When a baby first is felt moving in the mother’s stomach it’s called “the quickening.”
The quick and the dead, from Hamlet
"Also, another word is "Endday", that we don't use anymore, although you can kinda guess what it means😊"
-Me: It's night, right? Because at the end of the day it's night? Why isn't that pleasant?
Rob: "It is the day of your death😁"
-Me: Oh☹️
Me too! I was super-letdown when Robb gave the actual definition of that word. I thought it would mean “night-time” also. 😉
My first guess was "evening" ... Following this line of thought, it matches lovely with the common (though wrong) interpretation of Ragnarök as "dusk of the gods".
I clearly have a more morbid mind than most.
Rob
@@WordsUnravelled Applauding at the alliteration (apologies for misspelling your name) ✌️
😂 I literally had the same conversation with myself in my head 😂😂😂
Oh so that is why Bilbo shouted “Attercop Attercop!” At the spiders of Mirkwood.
I paused it to write that and then you mentioned it too 😂
You two are really great together, you let each other speak, you're interested in what the other person has to say - I love to see it. Someone needs to commission an etymology TV show and have you guys front it.
"Rantallion" has enriched my life quite out of proportion to its length.
To bad I cant unlearn this word. Hopefully I'll forget in few weeks
I'd come across calathumpian as someone whose Scrotum doesn't have a seam.
@@maxberan3897 😢😂
How about an episode discussing the multitude of words meaning "a random assortment?" For instance: gallimaufry, salmagundi, hodgepodge, mishmash, charivari, melange, olio, potpourri, farrago, congeries, bricolage, goulash, pastiche, collage, slumgullion, succotash, gumbo, ragbag, dog's breakfast. The list is in itself a gallimaufry of strange words ("gallimaufry" being my favorite). The etymology of some of them is obvious (with food references prominent), but others are very obscure.
A salmagundi is a meat salad. Not the kind where the meat is made into salad, like chicken salad, but the easier kind where larger pieces of recently cooked meat are laid on top of the lettuce. By extension (or derision?) salmagundi came to mean a mess.
farrago as well
You have solved a mystery. In the Mummers Play (a traditional Christmastide street theatre) that I've performed many times, the quack Doctor character, when asked what he can cure says this:
"All kinds of diseases,
just as my little physic pleases.
The ips, pips, pops, palsy and the gout.
The pains within and the pains without.
The mollygrubs, the gollygrubs and all kinds of rantantiorious little things you can think of. "
[Herga Mummers Play, based on several collected frafments of old plays from the Harrow, Middx, area]
Surely a milliard would be 1/1000th of a duck?
In the UK the technical term for a clock maker is still an horologist.
As is a watchmaker, or any manufacturer of timepieces.
@@cynicaldodgyknees6248 that was my dad's profession. He had it on his business card and letterhead.
@@BrennanYoungDid you follow in his footsteps?
@@cynicaldodgyknees6248 no, he actively discouraged me against it. Cheap quartz was happening, keeping better time than those marvellous old machines, and he decided that the future for mechanical timepieces was looking very bleak. It's a shame, but he wasn't wrong: Almost everyone uses their phone as a watch these days, and public clocks (that are kept maintained) scarcely exist any more. I love public clocks! Every major city should have a signature chime IMO.
@@BrennanYoungI understand his advice. Such a shame though.
A stound? That is astounding.
Mulligrubs was a kids show on tv here in Australia about 25 years 🤔 ago. As soon as I saw the title of this episode the theme song jumped into my head.
I came here to say the same. For anyone not indoctrinated the odd floating head with a big grinning mouth must be very confronting 😂
It was broadcast from 1988 so we're showing our age
It's also used in Oz to indicate a ball rolled along the ground in games where said ball should be thrown in the air. A " mulligrubber."
Perhaps then this also explains calling kids mulligrubbers which I remember as a child in Australia
Yes, I thought it was a commonly known cricket term. I had forgotten the TV show.
Susie Dent taught me the lost word that I most want to bring back: overmorrow. I find is much less clunky than "the day after tomorrow".
…and while we’re at it, complete the set with “foreyester” for the day before yesterday…
@@heymikeyh9577 yestreen in Shakepeare
"Hold off, unhand me grey-beard loon!
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.."
Rime of the Ancient Mariner
"And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I."
The fair breeze blew,
The white foam flew,
And the forrow followed free.
We were the first to ever burst into the silent sea.
I think he was intentionally using language that was already old fashioned at the time he was writing.
Jess looks like Princess Leia.
And so does Rob.
Rob looks like Princess Leia? 🤔
@@Evan490BC Hint: headphones
She has one of the most beautiful faces on RUclips.
@@Simon-fg8iz 😁
Just sprayed coca-cola through my nose, thank you very much! You made my day. 😂
In Swedish a porpoise is tumlare. In Norwegian spider is edderkop. Porpoise in German is Schweinswal, pig whale, and the Norwegian/Danish marsvin, sea pig. That old word for squirrel sounds like Swedish ekorre, as in the song "Ekorren satt i granen", the squirrel sat in the Christmas tree
Äldre stavning av ekorre har varit ekorne vilket antyder på manlig gris .
In the Christmas tree??? Ekorrn satt i julgranen?
17:00 The Norwegian word for spider is “etterkopp!”
So Spider-man would be Etterkopp-Man in Norway 😆
*edderkopp
15:30 In the past, beer brewing was predominantly carried out by women, so there were more brewsters than brewers.
There may be an official ruling somewhere and I'm just plain wrong, but I would consider squirrelled to be two syllables; either squirr-elled or perhaps squir-relled.
most dictionaries of American English show the schwa sound before the ell as optional/occasional, making it speaker's choice how many sillybulls you make it.
Stertorous and eructation are words very commonly used in veterinary medicine. Many of the brachycephalic breeds (think English and French bulldogs) have stertorous breathing due to their short and narrow noses. And eructation is what ruminants do by belching up a small bolus of food (or cud) to chew it before swallowing it again.
Wow!
Interesting! "Messeems" is the exact equivalent of the Quebec french "me semble" pronounced "messemb'" when the French expression is: "Il me semble". Archaic probably as are many of our expressions.
Bilbowright > Bilbo = a type of sworth made with metal from the Basque city of BILBO (in the Basque language) or Bilbao (in the Spanish language). It's the city where I'm from. And near by there used to be some iron mines with the strongest iron in Europe (because it has hematite) which was the reason why British engineers made a Steel factory in the city, thus bringing along the way with them the first football (soccer) team of the Basque Country and even of the Iberian peninsula: Athletic Club of the city of Bilbo-Bilbao.
Gah- first time I ever heard of Bilbao was back in 1982 - when England played a World Cup game there... Bryan Robson scored a super fast goal - against The France) -
Had an Naranjito mug as a kid too.
Well done in the Euros by the way!
Nice, thanks. Ironically, many Basques that use the name of Bilbo don't consider themselves as French nor Spanish , and claim for their Basque national Football team to be able to play in international competitions, like Wales, Scotlan and a such, but the EU state of Spain keeps vetoing it. 😂😂
But also, I believe - bilboes - were leg-irons on the poop decks of sailing ships (in about the 17th century) for locking up (and punishing) miscreant ship's officers.
Giraffe is one of my favorite animal names in Chinese - it’s 长颈鹿 (chang jing lu) which literally means “long neck deer”. I was a Chinese major in my undergrad (and lived in China for many years), and I just love Chinese animal names because they’re just very visually descriptive. Of course you have the pandas - xiong mao (literally “bear cat”), and because the giant panda (da xiong mao - big bear cat) and red/small/lesser panda (xiao xiong mao - small bear cat) have similar coloring, they are both given the same name. Then a raccoon (cousin of the red panda) is a huan xiong - washing bear. Or a moose is a tuo lu (camel deer), which is also very apt. Anyway, I know it’s an English podcast, but thought you might enjoy these in case you see this comment! Also, love the podcast!
I grew up with the word catarrh. We would use this word in our family when we had sinus issues. We would say "I have that catarrh taste or catarrh smell." My grandma was born in 1889, my parents were born in 1915 and 1918 and I was born in 1963. I so go out in the world, and no one has heard of this word. A coworker a few years ago found it in Wikipedia and it has to do with sinus which the term they used back then. I finally felt validated. My family also used the term schlech or schleck which meant we didn't eat properly. But I can't find any evidence of it. BTW it was fun watching Rob turn red. As if he was getting sunburned before our eyes.
Catarrhal fever is a disease of cattle that causes a severe upper respiratory infection and LOTS of mucous nasal discharge. I believe the catarrh refers to the mucous and discharge.
I grew up with catarrh as well. Suffered from it a lot in my childhood. Turns out I have a lactose intolerance. After I was weaned from the bottle 🍼 I wouldn't drink milk for my mother, then later I wouldn't eat butter. So naturally, as a baby I was avoiding things that would cause symptoms.
You really brushed past this, but I think it's a really interesting point that a lot of people don't understand. I think it was only earlier this year...maybe late last year, that I learnt the real reason behind the months having the wrong numbers. Most people seem to believe it's because of the _addition_ of July and August for Julius and Augustus Caesar. But in actuality July and August are just _renamings_ of existing months that were _correctly_ numbered after 5 and 6, and the numbers are wrong because, as you say, they moved the start of the year back from March to January.
Scottish Gaelic still has a glimpse of the older meanings in the months. September/An t-Sultain is “the fattening time”; hinting at the abundance of harvest. A few relate to the old festivals but most describe the month well, like December/An Dùbhlachd, which means “blackness”. Check them out!
It wasn't that long ago that the new year was moved to January in European countries, and not all countries moved it at the same time.
I was under that *exact* misapprehension, and was curious when Jan/Feb came up in the video as the late additions. Thank you for explaining it.
The year still ended in December, what we now call January and February was just the time between the years. Nobody was doing anything, so you didn't need to be able to name specific dates. I wish we could bring that back!
For Rob: I think the German word Eichhörnchen is fairly easy to explain. Eiche is an oak tree, as you said. =chen is a diminutive ending and as always with =chen endings makes the word neuter. Horn means lots of things amongst which is, well, horn. Consider then a red squirrel (the grey ones are American invaders and can be disregarded). They have tufts around their ears which look a bit like wispy horns. So Eichhörnchen is a little horned thing that lives in an oak tree. Simples!
...which brings to mind the Bavarian "Oachkatzerlschwoaf".... (oak kitten tail...) as squirrels are known as Oachkatzerl (oak kittens) there. Something of a tongue twister.
We have also (in our family!) helvetisized squirrel to "Squirrli" after a family member had difficulty with the word! (adding the Swiss-German diminutive "-li").
One of the reasons I like this particular part is that as a very young child growing up bilingually, I told British people around me that squirrel was too hard to say and that Eichhörnchen was easier... I think they begged to differ LOL
@@Woeschhuesli good! There is another Hochdeutsch equivalent - Eichkätzchen - an oak kitten, because of the tail. So the Schweizerdeutsch term is akin to that - with the other diminutive of course.
@@johnfenn3188 Yes, Oachkatzerl in Bavarian dialect, as I said, not Swiss German, no doubt refers to Eichkätzchen… In Swiss-German it‘s usually just the typical diminutive Eichhörnli.
(Bavaria is a German state, not a Swiss one!)
@@Woeschhuesli Entschuldigung! I realised at once that I had muddled two things up, but you can’t correct RUclips posts!
Re: Tolkien and spiders, Shelob literally means "female spider" 🕸🕷 Thanks for a fun and fascinating episode! ❤
'afterblismed' - Perfect: I needed a word for a native passionflower (Passiflora aurantia) here in Queensland where the petals change from a virginal white when it first opens to red after pollination as the seed capsule swells, and afterblismed (after blossomed?) is more elegant than preggers. Also, on the Monoceros front, there is a very ordinary 'winery' here called 'Old Fat Unicorn' with an image of a rhinoceros on the label. As the rhinoceros pictured is of the two-horned variety, the marketeer who dreamt it up seems to have been rather oblivious.
I'm 59 and grew up in Cincinnati. As a young boy, my mom said as a warning "Woe betide you". I didn't understand, but it was clear as a bell.
We need more episodes like this! Obscure words and old and disused words are so fascinating
The Woodwrights's Shop was a popular Public Television show that ran for 37 years. A master carpenter named Roy Underhill demonstrated traditional (pre-electric) tools and methods of crafting all sorts of wooden products. Still available on the internet, highly recommended.
I loved that TV show! Before electric power tools, people used tools that were powered by manually generated motion (such as Roy's wood-turning lathe), water wheel, windmill, or animal-drawn turnstile (bull, donkey, horse).
The clockmaker being called an horologer reminds me of something my sister and I have been doing for a long while as an in-joke where we'll be discussing some random topic and arrive at a point or factoid about it where we've reached the limits of our knowledge of the topic, so we'll take the topic and tack on "-ologist" to the end and say either we're not one of those, or you need to talk to someone who is.
"I dunno- talk to an ice-ologist" or "But what do I know, I'm not an dogologist."
I remember something similar in my late teens. We 'made up' an -ologist word. Some years later, I found that some actually existed!😂
I remember using the "I'm not a __-ologist" line recently for humor effect, though I don't recall what the topic was.
You corrected some misinformation for me. I had been told that the reason that *Sept*ember through *Dec*ember seemed to be incorrectly numbered was that Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus inserted months for themselves in the middle of the calendar, offsetting the subsequent four months. I had to look it up, because I had never heard an alternate explanation. Yours is, of course, correct. I'm definitely embarrassed not to have known this before, since some of my master's work was on the history of the calendar (though I was admittedly focused on the astronomical phenomena measured and not on the actual names).
Cesar and Augustus arguably added days to their months, but that seems to be a matter of legend as well.
July and August might not have been renamed had Quintilus and Sextilus been called Quintember and Sextember instead. On other hand it's probably for the best as otherwise Rob would be blushing the whole next month if it weren't named August.
@@ernestcline2868😂
I remember being entertained as a child by a performance of "Taradiddle Tales", an anthology of amusing sketches with a peculiar name... which I now understand meant that they were *untrue* stories.
Oh that's delightful!
In Dutch we still use miljard as a thousand million. Old English was a lot closer to Dutch before the French influence (thx William :p) made it what it is today.
But... so do we in French! :D
In German, there is also a "Milliarde" for a thousand million...
@@Woeschhuesliyes, I was just coming to say this as well. I've been living in Germany for decades and when I was learning the language the difference between million milliard billion billiard etc really threw me. Interestingly enough English language voice to text doesn't know the word milliard or trilliard, only billiard as the pool ball game.
From 5 to 12, I lived in Connecticut, and Autumn still reminds me of my childhood there. She’s right: it’s amazing that time of year.
Welcome back, it's great to see you again!
I'm pretty certain most of European countries are still using Miliard as 1 000 000 000, it's only English speakers who use Bilion for it :)
I recently learned "Milliard" in German and my head exploded at the thought of having to count the noughts before I knew what to say... 😵💫
Yes, we're now the oddity!
Meconfirms. Many/(all?) Slavic languages use the word miliard for 10^9
@@WordsUnravelled "Milliard used to be called "billion" in french in the past. Maybe that's why?
Now, billion means what you call "trillion" in english.
@@Ellie-wl3rw Simple to derive these: After each such word ending in "-ion" (million, billion, trillion, ...) you insert an extra level word where you replace the "-ion" ending with "-iard" (milliard, billiard, trilliard, ...). All of these are spelled the same in German but will be capitalized (like all German nouns) and -- as a little hint -- they are all of the feminine gender (thus "die Million", "die Milliarde", "die Billion", ...). But you will rarely use these words beyond "Milliarde" (billion/milliard) in everyday language.
Rhinos are just bodybuilder unicorns... 😁
...just Unicorns on the "roids"... 😂
No, they're fat unicorns. Haven't y'all seen Nimona?
Funny in English Gabber means who never stops talking.
In the Netherlands it's know for style of electronic music hardcore techno from the 90's. But the word gabber comes from an Amsterdam Yiddish slang, based on the Hebrew chaver meaning "mate" or "friend".
Back in the 1970's, I met the Queensland Railways horologist. Keeping trains on time was very important, and there were super-accurate pendulum clocks located in Brisbane, suburban railway stations and in main stations throughout the state. Keeping them running accurately was vital.
The master pendulum clocks sent a master signal over the telegraph lines to each station to synchronise the clocks at all the stations. GPS eliminated the need for the wired signals by providing a millisecond accurate reference.
Squir-El is Kal-El's timid brother.
Super squirrely of him!
Ettercap is still used as a name for spider in Northeastern Scotland, but unfortunately is now completely out of use among anybody younger than maybe 70-80 years old.
I'm mid 70s, and I too have noticed not only words dying while unfamiliar vernacular arise, but subtle drifts in the pronunciation of even the familiar. The emphasis on what 'feels' like the wrong syllables.
Also, I was never fond of contractions, as I was taught these should be confined to those times when abbreviations were used. I can scarce tolerate the new fad of the feebleminded in not bothering to even use the apostrophe to inform the reader that you are hurrying to the point.
Soon we will return to that path already trodden, and confine ourselves to grunts and gestures. And I have a finger for that!
This was a particularly glorious episode. Thank you! Is there a term for the made up words that run in families?
"Ambulance chaser" is the type of lawyer who takes on the cases of people who might file personal injury cases. I'm not sure what the word might be for someone who seeks out money that way and gets injured themselves, but it's definitely a recognizable type of person. Questmonger is a fine name for it.
As recently as 1975, Steeleye Span were singing "all around my hat I shall wear the green willow...for a twelvemonth and a day ".
Nice to see Rob mention that there is an actual numerical quantity (10,000) for"myriad" - meseems not many people realise that.
On older job titles, many of my ancestors were listed on census forms as cordwainers.
It's interesting that -ster tends to denote a feminine form, but "sempster" is the masculine form of "seamstress"
Oh, right! That song popped into my head immediately upon hearing the word Twelvemonth. I was too busy listening to Jess and Rob to follow my bewildered brain to the roots of the song in which that line occurs.
In modern American English slang, "rantipole" is known as "reverse cowgirl."
I've actually incorporated "overmorrow" and "ereyester" into my vocabulary since catching the episode that brought them up.
In Dutch, "overmorgen" and "eergisteren", are still very much in everyday use.
In fact, every time I watch videos like this I realise how much closer English and Dutch used to be.
@@emdiar6588Afrikaans changed them to oormôre and eergister.
In Swedish there is övermorgon and Förrgår.
Amongst the vagaries, vicissitudes and verisimilitude’s of life, you illuminate new pathways to perambulate.
Per Wikipedia: Porpoises (/ˈpɔːrpəsɪz/) are small dolphin-like cetaceans classified under the family Phocoenidae. Although similar in appearance to dolphins, they are more closely related to narwhals and belugas than to the true dolphins. There are eight extant species of porpoise, all among the smallest of the toothed whales. Porpoises are distinguished from dolphins by their flattened, spade-shaped teeth distinct from the conical teeth of dolphins, and lack of a pronounced beak, although some dolphins (e.g. Hector's dolphin) also lack a pronounced beak.
As a 70's Aussie teenager growing up in Melbourne, there was a slang term called "Ball-tearer" we all used for something good, great or exceptional & it could be applied equally to someone, an object or an occurrence, "He's a ball-tearer of a bloke", "That was a ball-tearer of a dance", The latest song from AC/DC is a ball-tearer", etc...all of which sounded just a bit like the old term "Balter"...I've no idea if there's any form of relationship between the two but when I heard "Balter" it immediately reminded me of the slang term from my youth.
lol as I read the first line, I was thinking AC/DC, Bon Scott... amazing they haven't yet used it as a song title ;)
If "Baxter" used to mean "Baker who is a woman", does that mean that in the past, surnames were inherited from the woman's side? How would that become a surname otherwise?
I've read some speculation around this, with a few suggestions: unmarried women professionals with children might pass the trade name down to their children, or that perhaps a brewster might pass the trade name to those she taught the trade even as the ending was losing its sense of gender. - Jess
It is also possible that the business got passed down. Three or four generations of female brewers in a family would lock it in.
I have come across several Pseudologist on the internet, so this word has to be brought back into common usage
Only several?
Political pseudology is out of control in America! 🤣
Jactitation of marriage is still a legal term of art. If not, I at least remember reading about it in law school 15 years ago.
It describes the "false declaration that one is married to a specified person."
I have mulligrubs used a lot in Appalachia in recent times. I have also used "hullabaloo" a lot. I had a interactive fantasy bed time tale called the land of Hullaballoo. I encouraged the kids to use their imagination of things they could do and adventures they can have in dreamland. You mentioning the word reminded me of the ongoing tale. It would get more fanciful as time went on. Trish who was fond of sweets to a fault usually imagined some adventure she could go on to consume as many as possible. Harold imagined adventures with dinosaurs and I can't recall what the other two imagined. Hullabaloo is the magical world of dreams, where anything is possible. There is a place for hullabaloo, it is in your dreams.
Not a particularly old word, but "voluntold" is one I recently became aware of. When you've been voluntold, someone has either volunteered your services without your consent or assigned you a task themselves. It's generally used in a humorous fashion.
What a come back episode! 😂😂😂
Im 78 years old and easily remember hearing Fufataw being used in my lifetime and everyone seeming normal with it.
"palter" is an archaic word worth an etymological probe.
As in Macbeth's:
"And be these juggling fiends no more believed,
That palter with us in a double sense"
Saturnight reminds me of the German Sonnabend, which is used in some regions for Saturday.
Sonnabend is a combination of Sonntag = Sunday and abend = night / evening, so it's "the night before Sunday", like Saturnight is the night before Saturday.
On the word conspue, in Australia to vomit is sometimes called having a spew or spewing ,mainly after having to many alcoholic drinks.
Rabbit in Dutch is 'konijn', which is not that far away from 'coney'.
It's "coineanach" in Scots Gaelic (pronounced like the drink "cognac"). I love how languages reflect each other so much.
In Australian 60s rural slang, rabbits were 'connies' with a con sound. I wondered if there were a connection with Italian coniglio....
@@robpeace2531 and spanish Conejo!
@@Anne-Enezand in German Kaninchen, "little kanin" but not dog (canine) rather "little coney".
Coinín in Irish - remember all those Irish convicts
Porposie is of latin origin via the old French word "pourpois" (porcopiscus, pig-fish). But strangely the French name of this animal nowadays, "marsouin", have an old Norse origin (via the Normans or via Dutch) which used to mean... sea-pig
I shall not remain silent as Rob gives us his facial expression regarding making an episode about gaming lingo. Pardon me but that would be an excellent episode.
Fun fact: a seamstress was also slang for a prostitute. In Dutch seamstress is naaister. Naaien is slang for 'doing the deed'. There has to be a link here.
We have the same in Afrikaans, but the word is naai for both sewing and doing the deed. I have a CD from a band called Die Naaimasjiene which literally means The Sewing Machines, but there is an obvious double entendre.
And of course the Seamstresses’ Guild in Ankh Morpork, usually mentioned with an embarrassed clearing of the throat - “they call themselves seamstresses (hem, hem)”.
I love what Sir Terry Pratchett does with this in the Discworld novels! - Jess
@@WordsUnravelled Especially Sandra Battye, who provides special services for men who’ve lost their wives…
@@WayneKitchingI find Afrikaans to be a very fascinating language, almost like a Time Capsule of Old Dutch, of course well it basically is, but it's so interesting to compare how the languages have changed and also remained identical over centuries
Rob selfwillied four times during this. That's what I'm calling it when someone makes themselves blush from now on.
Since "stound" was used for hour, then is something that is astounding something that captivates us for a long time, like about an hour? I have no idea, but I can tell you what would truly be astounding, and that would be if Rob or Jess could somehow comment on this query. Gracias in advance, fellow flashgamers!
Please do a segment exclusively on Old English job titles. Not only are they fascinating of themselves, but are used by genealogists to differentiate between people with the same name. I have used words like: cordwainer (leather finisher), hosier (stocking maker), hellier (tile roofer) and whitesmith (metal worker specializing in pewter) to prove I had the correct person.
The word 'jawsmith' reminds me of the Dutch 'smoelsmid', facesmith -> the dentist.
Herbert Coleridge wrote at least two books. He also wrote "A Glossarial Index to the Printed English Literature of the Thirteenth Century".
The difference between milliard vs billion is not just those two words, but between two entire naming systems, namely 'long vs short scale.'
In the long scale, all names ending in -llion are based on the etymologically implied powers of million, with billion being 1 000 000^2, trillion being 1 000 000^3 and so on, with the intermediate -lliards simply being the smaller -llion x 1 000.
The short scale system is simply -llion every x 1000.
And yes, the names ALL fall out of order once you really start comparing the two.
You're back! I'm so happy!
There is or was a fishmarket in Billingsgate in London where the women that worked there would use foul and obscene language. They were referred to as "fishmongers."
A monger is someone who sells goods - ironmonger hung on for a long while too.
People from the North East say I'm gangyam..I am walking / going home. The Perishers are a decades old comic strip in the Daily Mirror newspaper. Two dog characters are Old Boot and B.H.Calcutta ( failed.) Their conversations often use the phrase " Tish, tosh and taradiddle." I've used this phrase for 60 years when dismissing what someone says as " a load of old tripe."
I use to hear foofarah quite a bit but not much any more. The generation that used has passed away. Many words and letter writing skills of the past are gone.
Yes, foofarah is still around here in the American South, but you don't hear it too often.
My mother, from north-easr Kansas, used the word foofaraw.
@@mylaughinghog My mother and grandmother used it as well.
We still use mulligrub as a verb. Meaning pouting or sulking and complaining.
I legit love this channel. You guys are so infectious with your genuine interest and wholesome personas. I have yet to see a video from you guys where I didn't learn something totally new and interesting.
'My Welsh grandparents in the 1970s still said'A Twelvemonth' in their everyday speech in addition to 'A year'.
My grandparents (whose grandparents haled from Cornwall) would say, " it must be twelve month or more ....", not "a year or more as is usual now.
"I'll see you effing soon" :D
I'm sure I'm not the first to mention this, but Jess has a habit of looking off to the right, whereas Rob is always looking at the camera
Re 'Squirrelled' being the longest single-syllable word in the English Language, could you perhaps touch on Halfpennysworth - which has an historic alternate pronunciation (despite the spelling) of 'Haipths' - a single syllable, where the spelling would be even longer than Squirrelled - as in 'May I have a "haipths" of boiled sweets?'. Admittedly since the death of the Halfpenny in 1983 and inflation, the need for the word and it's pronunciation has become somewhat archaic... But am I wrong?
What a revelation! I've heard haipeth with two syllables, but I bet some folk pronounced it as one. I reckon you're onto something.
Rob
@@WordsUnravelled What I am really curious about is examples of words where the spelling and pronunciations have diverged so much as to be practically unrecognisable, e.g. boatswain & the pronunciation 'bosun'. Or nounds like Greenwich pronounced "Gren'ich" -- of which there are literally dozens of place-name examples in London. Love the vidoes!
@@schubertuk Isn't a lot of the reason for this that spelling was standardised with the invention of the printing press but the literacy of the people came much later and so the pronunciation continued to evolve after the spelling was fixed.
@@johnhockenhull2819 possibly! I'm no expert! It may also be a factor of time (purely my curiosity at work here). I would be curious whether the US has developed any pronunciations that have started to significantly deviate from the spellings.
@@schubertuk Two that immediately spring to mind are Connecticut and Arkansas.
:) I saw "eftsoons" first in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I want to bring this one back.
I could listen to you both all day long. I actually listened to the audio podcast earlier today and now watched the video and the video makes the words seem clearer (for a non-native speaker). Thanks for the content.
Thank you for listening AND watching!
36:24 Jactation: Back when I was in my Anesthesiology residency I was reading a very old description of inducing anesthesia. I think the phrase went something like: "administer 100% nitrous oxide until the jactations occur". In this usage it referred essentially to a seizure or, at least, to a certain amount of large muscle "twitchiness". It was a clinical sign that a certain 'stage' (depth) of anesthesia had occurred but also that the patient was hypoxic. Time to add some oxygen. Ah, the good old days.
Your videos are for people who have a good comprehension of linguistics. But I still learn a lot from every episode.
This episode was so charming!
I'm really happy that you released a new episode, I was a bit restless when there had been no updates recently.
I feel like Cattywampus/Catawampus/Caterwampus may have some connection to Caddy Corner/Catercorner.
I agree. "Cattycorner" is etymologically "quatre"+"corner", so "cattywampus" could be "at a 45° angle to where it should be", if only I knew what "wampus" means there.
I agree, a synonym perhaps for off-kilter. Cattywampus being a Ruckus that is off kilter, where as catty corner being a diagonal in relation to also fits
I’ve also seen/heard kitty-corner
I'm surprised that 'sennight' was not mentioned when talking of calendar terms. It was the old way of saying a week ie. seven nights.
Love these deep dives into old language. Slang or cant is fascinating. Thanks Rob and Jess.
Also fortnight, which is standard usage in the UK but apparently obsolete or little used in the US.
As a child in Australia in the 1970s, a mulligrubber was a ball bowled low or along the ground in cricket. Bankers still use the term ‘yard’ (for milliard) for large financial positions.
Growing up going to Catholic grade school, the nuns would teach us very short prayers to say aloud (like "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph"). The nuns would call those "ejaculations "!
Did they have to coece you into practising them, or did you do it selfwilly?
Goodness I haven't thought about such ejaculations ("Glory Be!" was another) since about 1989. Thanks.
I have, however, just read every novel of the crime writer Patricia Wentworth (d 1961), and a fair bit of Dame Ngaio Marsh (d 1982). Their characters are ejaculating at each other all the time - usually in ("Never! You cannot mean it!") surprise.
One of my work colleagues (admittedly a pompous blowhard) would ask quite regularly at meetings in the 1990s: "May I interject with an ejaculation at this juncture?" We all got the joke, but it was a very tired one by the time I left that workplace.
"Ejaculation" refers to a spontaneous word or phrase. I, too, went to Catholic school in the late '50's and the 1960's and heard it used in that context. This was long before I heard it used in the biological sense.
I can’t remember if it is Ngaio Marsh or Dorothy Sayers who is always ejaculating in their books.
come! come! let's not get out of hand!
Not sure about the "little acorn". Many rodents are called Hörnchen (Eichhörnchen, Streifenhörnchen, Sandhörnchen), even their whole family is named accordingly. Weorna itself sounds close enough to Hörnchen when enough spirit is involved.
After listening to this and other episodes of Words Unravelled, I have a request for at lease part of a future episode: a discussion of something, which many of us find particularly annoying, that has crept into our speech, particularly or most noticeably it seems, that of young women - “vocal fry.” Where did it come from, the mechanics of it, and what therapies there are for eliminating it.
Questmonger sounds like someone who overindulges in side-quests rather than playing the main quest of a game
Jactation. Makes me think of the way that Jack Sparrow walks.
I thought it was interesting that one of my great-great-grandmothers, contrary to most women of the time who were listed as "at home" gave her profession as "mid-wife" on I think the 1850 US census.
I being a big Tolkien fan was delighted when i moved to Norway and found out that Norwegian for spider is ederkopp I just subscribed to this fascinating stuff.
Very good episode. Love all the info
Some off the words you mentioned look like Italian sounding to me
A billion is un miliardo in Italian, clock is orologio, clockmaker is orologiaio
Out on a tangent here, a questmonger in Italian is un leguleio or Azzeccagarbugli. The latter comes from a character in Manzoni's Promessi sposi while the former means opportunistic hypocrite cowtowing to the powerful
VENTOSITY! What a wonderful word for describing and evaluating political campaigns.