Can you be gormful, wistless or ert?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 พ.ค. 2024
- Join word nerds Jess and Rob as they uncover English's unpaired words, lost positives and orphaned negatives. Why can you be "nonchalant" but not "chalant"? If something perfect is "immaculate", what does it mean to be "maculate"? And if you're no longer "exasperated" are you therefore "asperated"? Find out in this edition of Words Unravelled.
👂LISTEN: podfollow.com/words-unravelle...
or search for "Words Unravelled" wherever you get your podcasts.
==LINKS==
Rob's TH-cam channel: / robwords
Jess' Useless Etymology blog: uselessetymology.com/
Rob on X: x.com/robwordsyt
Jess on TikTok: tiktok.com/@jesszafarris
Thanks to Martyn Williams for the music and continued support.
#etymology #wordfacts #English
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Rob here with a warning not to come to me for medical advice! Macular degeneration is so called because it effects part of the retina called the 'macula'. Macula gets its name from the Latin for a spot or a blemish/stain (because it's a little dot). So I got the etymology right, but not the physiology. 👀
And Jess here noting that I was incorrect when I said that "nocent" is from a root meaning "knowing" or "to know." Rather, as some commenters have noted, it's from the Latin nocere "to harm." That's what I get for riffing!
In other words, Rob, your description of the macula was... peccable!
@@anniehelman3516 Getting your maculae pecked is definitely to be avoided.
"You're so innocent. Bless your heart."
Having both of you bouncing off each other and showing excitement about your mutual revelations is far more entertaining than a single entomologist struggling to have others share his or her passion for words. It’s fun listening to two people from very different backgrounds united in their interest in the origins and usage of English language words.
Etymologist. An entomologist studies insects.
malapropism!
Obviously I meant to write etymologist - either a ‘bug’ in my auto-correct spell check, or I’m going senile (my money is on the later!).
@@mbloy613 Why not both? The thought is not exactly strange to me.
@@mbloy613 if you study that bug will you become an entomologist?
Something can EXplode. Something else can IMplode.
Does that mean I am in a constant state of "ploding"?
With regard to “inept”, “adept” is a good opposite.
Not really. "ineptus" in latin meant "not appropriate", from the positive "aptus" = Appropriate (the negative prefix "in" often chanced the first voyel of the following root.) "Adept" is from "adipiscor" = I reach something: "adeptus" is someone who reaches a place, or who obtains something, or who joins a group.
@@nicolettabiardi7128 Sorry Nicoletta, I think you're wrong here. From my schoolboy latin I think adeptus was one who has atttained something and adept seems like a good antonym for inept
Ruthless: “I wonder where Ruth is?”
Firesign Theater
The Further Adventures of Nick Danger: Third Eye
Noice
As a word geek, and dictionary collector, I am really enjoying this channel. Not boring for me! 🤣🤣🤣
- So what does inert mean?
- Well, it means that it's not ... ert
- It wouldn't ert a fly.
- Yes Minister, The Greasy Pole, BBC, 1981.
I was thinking maybe it was from Thin Blue Line. I'll never forget that time Constable Goody thought the ER on Buckingham Palace's gate was pronounced as "errr." He said, "You know... 'er what lives in the palace!" As an American who saw that episode just before my first UK visit, it's all I could think about seeing the emblem everywhere!
Jess, your anecdote was similar to my experience as a child; I would ask my dad a random question, as children do, and if he didn’t know the answer he would tell me to look it up. Fortunately, he bought a collection of encyclopedias for us. But, if that wasn’t enough, there was a library two blocks away which I explored constantly. I feel very fortunate for my Dads honesty and not just making up an answer to appease me. I learned far more looking things up myself and getting lost through a rabbit hole of knowledge.
Rob, Jess, I really love this series, please keep going.
That's lovely. Thank you for sharing! - JZ
To hear how many perfectly reasonable, succinct, and useful words just stopped getting used, except in frozen formations and negatives, certainly does dislodge a few gruntles from me. Grrml, gromble, grr.
My favorite is "pessimal" as the opposite of "optimal" which isn't exactly lost, but far less often used
Since you brought Countdown's always magnificent Susie Dent into this discussion of missing words, I cannot let pass the opportunity to mention the instance on Qi with Sandi Toksvig asking the panelists if they knew about just such "orphaned negative" words. She brought up "ineffable" and "effable" and Sara Pascoe said that she had heard women use that lost word in phrases such as, "he's got nice trousers on today; he's totally effable."
Totally brilliant, Sara.
Sara's a hoot!
Having the ability to look up definitions is why I love reading on e-books so much.
Rob and Jess, I find your conversations fascinating. More importantly, I have a son, now 45, who has been deaf since he was 3-1/2 years old. While most of his daily life function in ASL (American Sign Language), we luckily provided him with CC TV (before it was commonly available) and a TDD telephone early on so his English skills are excellent. I am thinking of providing him the link to your podcasts as I suspect he will find them fascinating.
When I was about 15 I came across this sentence. "The army was underfed." It threw me. Un-derfed. Is there a word 'derfed?' I asked my father what it meant. He also had no idea. A few minutes later he said "How about under-fed." We had a good laugh.
I expected a delightful video, and I was appointed!
It wasn’t licious indeed
This is one of my new pleasures. Every time it pops up I get a warm happy feeling!
Macular degeneration is not staining of the vision, it is the degeneration of the macula, a yellow spot that contains a high concentration of photo receptors. Thus to be maculate is not necessarily bad. Dalmations are born immaculate but later develop their spots.
Staining not staying
@@rechmbrsAnd the etymology of "macula" is from Latin "stain"
This is true, but Rob’s point is slightly off. @AutoReport1 is pointing out that Rob is misunderstanding the meaning of macular degeneration.
Well, flabber my gast! As a long-time language nerd, I'd never made the connection between the English "disgust" and the Spanish "gustar" (meaning "to please")
LOL - I'd just made the mental leap from "maculate" to "macchiato" when Rob brought it up - in fact, I'd paused the video to comment that very thing.
21:05 - a pedantic screech at Jess saying "for you and I"!
Personally, I’m fiberglassted!
You two are absolutely delightful to watch.
I would consider "inept" to be unskilled, but "inapt" to be inappropriate to the situation. So an inept writer might make an inapt simile.
According to ChatGPT, etymological roots of "innocent" lie in "nocere" (to harm, to injure); "knowing" in Latin would be "scire"; "noscere" (to get to know); also see: "agnoscere", "cognoscere";
14:37 As the great Douglas Adams put it, "Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all."
I work as a children's entertainer. Whenever I meet a little girl named Ruth (and there are a few these days), I always ask the parents "Before she was born, were you ruthless?"
Rob, you may want to look at macula degeneration again. It's not about the eyesight being spotty. Macula is a term in anatomy. It describes the spot at the center of the retina, where all the sensor cells are cones, good for color reception (as opposed to a mix of cones and rods in the rest of the retina). This spot has a slightly different color when looking at the eye background. It was therefore called the 'macula', the mark.
Macula degeneration refers to receptor cells in the center of your field of vision dying. The macula degenerates.
Unrelated: As you speak German: you may have come across "Makel", and "makellos".
Oh my gosh Roband Jess I just love this series of TH-cam videos. I feel like I am just somewhat of a word geek myself and Itook two years of Latin in high school and one year of French in high school and I especially like the various variants of words that you have unraveled in such an energetic, thorough 😊👌🏻 and ebullient way in this video!
I just thought of a way to make the traditional English tea with a dash of milk more trendy: rebrand it as tea macchiato.
I enjoy your podcasts very much, but this one came at me from a different direction. When Jess said that a southern thing could be a "complisult" I spit my coffee across the room! My wife is southern and I learned this one the hard way, from her family the first time we met. So keep doing what you do, bless y'alls hearts! 😉 Truely love what you do!
Bless your heart! 🥰😉 - JZ
Macula is Latin for „spot“ - like a spot on a cloth. So maculate means something like spotted. The medical term refers to the macula densa, the spot in your eye, where the optic nerve enters the retina (the actual light sensitive „webby“ sheath in our eyes). So when you have a degradation of the optic nerve, you loose that spot along with your eyesight. Also interesting is the maculatur - an extra sheet of paper in between the pages of a handwritten book to soak up ink, that hasn’t dried up yet, so it becomes maculate but preserving the other pages of the book to become stained - it keeps them immaculate!
I misunderstood 'nonplussed' for years because it is close to 'not fussed'.
A famous one, that looks like this but isn't actually, is "inflammable", which - surprisingly - just means "flammable".
Similarly "inebriated" and the rarer "ebriated" both mean drunk.
"Inflammable" is the original word. "Flammable" is a back formation from it. Notice that a doctor diagnoses an inflammation, not a flammation, and a demagogue might make an inflammatory speech, but not a flammatory one.
@@hadz8671 In french, we have the noun "ébriété" (ebriaty) to describe, in a formal way, the state of being drunk. But we don't have the negative form, or the verb neither.
Flammable was invented because there was some confusion with some people that inflammable meant "not flammable" vs. its actual meaning of "able to be inflamed". This confusion was deemed absolutely unacceptable because of the extreme risk to the safety of persons or property should that mixup occur and so flammable was born.
Now that flammable exists and is the much more common word there's even more room for confusion but because inflammable is never used in situations where any misunderstanding might present a safety issue it's not a problem in real life. Mostly it just confuses people when reading old literature.
Because flammable is almost always the word used now, inflammable is well on its way to dying out.
@@pjl22222 Ages ago, I enjoyed reading Jean Aitchison's "Language Change: Progress or Decay?" She discusses topics like this. It's a fascinating and witty book.
Excellent podcast. Great to have two bouncing off each other. Reminder to Jess that it's "good for you and me" rather than "good for you and I".
Fact check: The earliest recorded use of "nonchalant" in English dates back to around 1734 in the writings of Roger North, a lawyer, politician, and writer. The first recorded occurrence of the word in French dates back to 1294 in Lais et descorts.
I've been watching this channel since the beginning and each episode is better than the one before. You are both great.
Listening to this, I was reminded of some of L. Frank Baum's silliness in his short story "Ozma and the Little Wizard." It features three imps named Olite, Udent, and Ertinent. It went right over my head when I was a kid; I just accepted them as strange fantasy names. The penny didn't drop until I was an adult.
@karenSDR. It took me a while to figure it out. I'mp not too sharp.
20:12 there's a story by isaac asimov called "the evitable conflict", although it is probably just a counterpart to inevitable.
In France, the adjective 'évitable' (avoidable) is as commonly used as his counterpart 'inévitable'.
@@Anne-Enez Thanks for that. Those of us with only school French wouldn't know.
@@hamishstewart5188 Thanks. You're welcome! Merci, de rien!
If there were a happy-hunting-ground in the sky after death, my version would definitely have you two in it and I would spend eons enjoying your enthusiasm for etymology. I rarely learn anything new about individual words in our family of Indo-European languages (I too have been down many a metaphorical rabbit hole in my time) but your videos have on occasion supplemented my knowledge as well as consistently delighting me. Thank you both so much.
Nocere is Latin for to harm or injure, not to know, surely
I think that's right - the origin of "noxious" and (I suppose) "obnoxious"
I think they confused it with "gnōscere".
Yes, you're right! That's what I get for riffing and going off-notes. 🙃 - JZ
@@pierreabbat6157 I thought so too.
"Apt:inept" goes back to Old Latin when the stress was on the first syllable. The 'a' in what would have been "inaptus" was unstressed, so it turned into "ineptus", and stayed that way when the stress shifted to being counted from the end (in this word "ep" was stressed) in Classical Latin.
I’m loving this podcast! I heard another orphan word: haught. As in, what someone who is haughty has a lot of.
'Gusted' reminds me of the Spanish Mucho gusto, which means pleased to meet you. Gusto being the equivalent of pleased or happy
roofless, without roof
I'm probably about to say something already known, but the 'gust' part of 'disgust', or at least the latin ancestor verb 'gusto' does find its way into English in 'gustation' and even in the Italian borrowing 'gusto' (as in 'to do something with gusto').
... a gust of wind
Spanish has the word “inevitable” (unavoidable; just like French) as well as “evitable” (avoidable).
Haddywist in Dutch would have been short for 'had ik dat wist' or 'had ik dat geweten' ( if I had only known). Wist is the singular past tense of weten ( to know) that seems the same as in wisdom.
So wistdom
This is wonderful, thank you! - JZ
I'm reminded that The elder Blackett, real name Ruth, in Swallows And Amazons is known as Nancy instead, because "pirates are ruthless."
Per ChatGPT "Per aspera ad astra" is the motto of NASA, the Royal Airforce and a squadron of United States Airforce. (Through hardships to the stars / no pain no gain).
A SYNTAX RULE THAT MADDENS ME
That is the use of "it" in a possessive belongs to scenario.
For instance when the object of conversation is a car, you might refer to "The car's engine" using apostrophe then "s" to indicate that the engine belongs to the specific car that we were already discussing. Alternatively you could use "It" instead of "The car" and I naturally want to do so with "It's engine". This is apparently not allowed as "it's" with an apostrophe is strictly reserved as an abbreviation for "it is" and instead I must use the seeming plural of "it" as in "Its engine".
Numerous educated people and language resources tell me I am just plain wrong in how I have used "it's" but the official usage seems so intrinsically wrong to my soul that, in order to comply, I try never to write "it's" nor "its" at all.
Bravo! Just because it's right doesn't mean its not wrong.
Wow, I like these things on words! On the topic of rue, there is a poem titled "With Rue My Heart is Laden" by A. E. Housman.
In Geordie English, especially my mother's generation, 'Haad yer wist' means be quiet and listen. Remembering though that her parents' families were fro. North of the border, her mother being feom Shetland, so that may be an extra influence
She said "term of phrase" at 19:26! Yall need to go back in time and put that in the eggcorn episode. I didn't even know that one existed! Now to rewind and listen to what she was actually saying when that happened...
Huh, I had to double check -- you're right! That was a slip of the tongue rather than ignorance of the idiom. Seems I need to do some vocal exercises before these pods. :) - JZ
Well, and of course there's the dreadful hole in English vocabulary (I'm definitely not the first to have noticed this) of the verb 'misle' = 'to deceive someone' (regular past tense).
Just discovered you guys a couple hours ago with Rob's brilliant Great Vowel Shift blog and am already smitten. The two of you together is grand.
It's funny how the Latin word meaning "to taste" transformed into the Spanish word meaning "pleasure". Also, why, in my 45 years, have I never heard of "gormless" or "take gorm"?
Speaking of "exasperate": One of the commands to parents in the New Testament is not to exasperate their children.
Regarding "inevitable", I was intrigued to discover how that links to "unavoidable" as I was studying Portuguese. In Portuguese, "to avoid" is "evitar", and at first, that made me think of "evade". A bit of etymological searching later, and I confirmed the connection. Inevitable is un-evade-able is unavoidable.
Inevitably, we also had:
evitate (obsolete) To shun; to avoid.
I knew someone who used the word irregardless in the same way I use regardless. I assume that this has crossed the Atlantic.
But it melts my brain with all the negatives added to regard or gard?
"ahh yes...this food gusts me well!"
That 'wyst' or 'wist' is interesting. In Dutch it is the past tense of 'weten' = to know! So 'knew' in English. Language is so fascinating! And I love those glorious rabbit holes language can take you into!
Brilliant episode! I thoroughly enjoyed watching you two "word nerds" - which is by no means meant as a disparaging term. 😁
when I'm exasperated I often ex-aspirate (breathe out, sigh)
Have you ever heard this quote: "Where you go, I will go, wher you stay, I will stay. Your people is my people, your God is my God."
This was said by Ruth, a woman from todays Jordan. She lived some 3000 years ago and we got the name Ruth from her.
You can read about this extraordinary woman in Ruths book in the old testamente in the Bible. She later became the great grandmother of the great king David in Israel.
Just delightful.
Jess is rapidly becoming my TH-cam crush.
Not only is she both smart and beautiful… but that moment of absolute joy when “macchiato” came up… that totally got me.
@oliverstjohn2406 Yes, Jess is so cute, it's painful! ("in a good way", as Americans like to add)...
I'm just loving this 'joining of the forces' and I find the history and hidden meaning of words to be intriguing. Always loved Rob's 'casts and sadly never came across Jess before. I'm thoroughly enjoying seeing her on my computer - takes my breath away.
I jess adore Jess.
@5:15 *Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff* titled one of his books: _Pissed Off: Is Better Than Being Pissed On..._
love you both so much! keep up the great work!
Love it!
It is really crazy how much OE is still intelligible with modern German: rue = Reue, wist = Wissen.
On an unrelated note, I'm just gonna say it: She is adorable. There, I said it.
Now thatv you've started exploring missing negatives/opposites, I suppose the next step would be words that are their own opposites? Dust - to add dust [dust for fingerprints] and remove dust - for starters.
Never mind words that *seem* to be opposites but mean the same: inflammable and flammable.
(The in- here is the preposition, not the negation particle.)
I love these words. Others are ravel, cleave, and oversight. I once read a mystery novel in which the protagonist, an art expert, in a thread completely irrelevant to the plot line, collected six or eight of these words for his own amusement as he proceeded to unravel the mystery. I cannot for the life of me recall the name or author. I'd love to re-read that one.
Contranyms! Love 'em. - JZ
Loving your videos guys!
Loving these collaborations, very interesting and entertaining. Keep up the good work.
I love this podcast! 😊
Oh, I've often been gruntled!
These videos are so awesome! My mind unravels 😊
Another such word is "uproar". Presumably a sudden and unexpected silence would be a downroar.
There is no "roar" in "uproar". It's related to "rear" as in "rear up".
Nonroar?
I think the opposite of "nonroar" would have to be "roar".
Very fun. Thank you.
There's no connection between grammatical negation and words with "negative" meanings.
There is, but it's not a hard-and-fast, 1:1 thing.
Love this! Satisfies the word geekiness in my soul...🥰
- Nonchalant is a participle of the old Verb "Chaloir" (to be worry or concerned with or by something) so nonchalant is someone who doesn't care by what surrounds him, someone not excited (not heated).
- Chalant (or chaland) has another meaning, it's a client or customer doing his shoppings in the same store. This word nowadays is used only in economy and retail business. It means literally "heated" clients attracted by the marchandise exposed in the store.
cool.
;-)
Love this new format from you guys. I also have to say, in no way detracting from her intellect and ability, that I find Jess’ smile totally captivating. I really enjoy watching you guys discuss back and forth. Lots more please!
Isaac Assimov wrote a short story titled :The Evitable War:.
So many of his short stories were based on a pun or other wordplay.
Loved this one.
Comment on the origin of the name Ruth: according to Hebrew etymology, the meaning is unknown, and the meaning of friendship was given to it from a translation into Aramaic in the 2nd Century.
One possible Hebrew meaning is from the root R-V-E - to be full of water or satisfied from drinking like satiety is for food.
This was fun. Thank you.
The word "nonchalant" existed in Swedish as a french loanword already in 1641. In English it was first mentioned in 1734, so it's a bit nonchalant (at least in the Swedish sense of the word) to claim that it was invented in English.
Here's a question I've had a long time: Why do we use "ignorant" to mean "not knowing" when it looks so much like it came from "ignore"? (Sometimes to ignore is to know and yet neglect or not heed something.)
Nocent and innocent come from latin "Nocere" = to harm someone. Therefore, "Nocent" is someone who harms others and "innocent" is someone who doesn't harm others. They have nothing to do with "knowing". In Italian we have "innocente", of course, but also "nocivo" (harmful).
For "exasperate" see colloquial American English phrase "that really chaps [chaffs] my hide."
For James II it probably referred to witches!!!!
Something that doesn't exist in English but is kind of funny in other Germanic languages such as German, Danish and Swedish is maculate as a verb meaning to destroy, annul, cross out or smash into pulp. It's most common use in Swedish and Danish makulera/makulere is to annul an invoice for a cancelled order, by so to speak crossing it out by staining the document. Historically it could also be used for staining someone reputation by badmouthing them.
Twain's bestseller "The Innocents Abroad" is an example of what Jess was referring to.
5:05 "Ticked off" (or pissed off) are not intensified versions of _ticked_ or _pissed_ . If my _pissed_ is intensified I am on my third bottle of _La Tache_ .
Captivating, a delightful accompaniment to the first cuppa of the day in bucolic Suffolk. Thank you both, such fun, so informative!
Same here in Christchurch, only over dinner!
Not yet had my first coffee of the day, but will head down to the Ipswich waterfront in not-so-bucolic Suffolk shortly 🤓☕
I think George Kaufman used the word "whelmed" when casually reviewing a play someone staged.
Some other examples are "unkempt" and "uncouth." If I remember correctly, the words "kempt" and "couth" did exist at one time, but fell out of use.
Inflammable and flammable have the same meaning, but the former is hardly used, primarily because it sounds like it makes something not "flam". But they both indicate something is volatile and can flame.
Throughout the entire presentation I was hoping to hear you cover - "unscathed" - can one be "scathed" - and if so are there varying degrees of "scathiness"?
Yes! To be scathed is to be harmed, but you don't hear it anywhere near as much as unscathed. The term "scathing remark" gets used for cutting criticism.
R
An enjoyable episode and one in which you both seem to have hit your stride - a lovely effervescence - with your ruths'less pursuit of lost orphans and your bold determination, the pair of you, to give no further feck.
- - -
Very off topic re: cumbersome swords.
A sword becomes cumbersome and, to use an ept example, unwieldy when its balance is off. A sword gets its balance from the blade's counterweight: the pommel. From short swords up to the mighty claymore (most often used as a two-hander), the balance point is 4 finger widths above the cross piece - Note: this pertains primarily to the Western tradition from the Vikings through to the mid-1500s, wherein 'sword' is a byword for that length of martial steel which has the cross piece down near, but not at, one end. Earlier pokie things like the Roman gladius utilised a very different fighting technique (and I can't help but think of the thousands of retired legionaries sitting about complaining bitterly about their 'tennis' elbows... shoulders... necks).
invaluable
innocent is from latin innocens with nocens being the present participle of nocere = to harm. So nocens = harming. innocent = not harming, harmless.
I have seen the word “effability” used in linguistics. The “effability thesis” is the hypothesis that every idea can be expressed in any human language.
Apparently also in philosophy where “The Effability thesis has it that all propositions can be encoded by a sentence. By contrast, the Ineffability thesis has it that no proposition can be encoded by a sentence.”
I've definitely heard the word "gusto" presumable derived from the spanish gusta "to like" used in American English when describing doing something with much enthusiasm, so that's kind of an opposite of disgust.