I've liked Words Unravelled from the start, but I think you guys are getting better at it. It seems more comfortable, like you know each other better. Super fun. Love it.
I get the same impression, moreso with Jess than with Rob. Rob has his own channel, and to my knowledge Jess does not, so I wonder if that has something to do with it. It felt like a few episodes ago a switch was flipped and the show hit its stride.
@@JimFortune It also depends on who compiled the dictionaries and grammar books. Being a language of sets of peoples both conquered and conquering, yet somehow managing to find a way to get along, the result has become a macaronic mix.
I love how virtually each episode includes a "We can cut that..." moment which then doesn't get cut. They make the episodes (even) more charming and fun!
Have you considered doing a show on words that appear vulgar but aren’t, such as bumfiddler, shuttlecock, and vagitus? An additional bonus would be to see Rob in the crimson-red mode for an entire show. Thanks for the great videos!
American elk are named after european elk (moose) by english settlers who had the word ancestrally, but had never seen one in centuries. They just remembered that it was a big deer, so they named the biggest deer they found in their new environment elk and called it a day.
The moose (Alces alces) is called "elk" or something similar in a bunch of germanic languages. German: Elch, swedish: älg, danish: elg, dutch: eland, etc. So, english speakers in North America using the woth "elk" for the wapiti (Cervus canadensis) is the source of confusion. The dutch "eland" is also used for big antelopes in Arcrica.
@@lakrids-pibe Alce as the scientific name for the Moose/Elk (Alces alces) is also the word for the animal in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian etc. And the french élan. And it has the same root as Elk.
That's basically what torpor8652 said there. English settlers named the North American Elk(Wapiti) after the animal called "Elk" in Europe, and what the Europeans call "Elk" is called a "Moose" in North America. Moose comes from the Algonquian word moosu, one of the Native American words for what Europeans call "Elk".
I was astonished that you did not mention that "deer" (der in OE) originally meant "animal" and continued to do so for centuries. Shakespeare mentions "mice and other small deer." Of course, in German, "Tier" means animal.
If memory serves, Holofernes and Nathaniel have a lengthy and pedantic discussion about the names of fallow deer at various ages in Shakespeare's 'Love's Labour's Lost'. The words 'sore', 'sorel' and pricket spring to mind, but not stag.
Malay speaker here, from Malaysia. No, orangutan doesn't have the connotation of "old". "Orang" simply means person/man and "hutan" / "utan" means forest. Man of the forest. Also, the word pangolin comes the Malay "pengguling", meaning "one who rolls up". But interestingly, the modern Malay word for pangolin is "tenggiling". I don't know how that came to be though.
And let’s not forget that in Italian, bufalo is the male animal, and bufala is the female. So bufalo mozzarella is… unlikely. It’s mozzarella di bufala.
I was playing a game once where you had to pick only specific cards in a grid. You played with a team member and one of you knew which were safe and which were not. They had to give you one word clues based on the images on the cards. You played against another team and the first team to select all the right cards won. So a single clue that applied to multiple CORRECT cards was key to winning. My buddy have me the clue etymology and was really proud of it. I had no clue how the history of words had any relevance to any of the images. In fact I felt stupid after not getting anything from it. I found out later that he was thinking of entomology which indeed made a lot more sense.
That's Codenames. It's a really fun game, and can be quite challenging. 5x5 grid of cards. ( I couldn't think of the game's name, but was able to find it with an internet search)
Rob's comments about earlier words for bear being linked to honey are interesting. Bear in Czech is medvěd (pronounced med-vied), inherited directly from proto-Slavic. "Med" is literally honey and "věd" is science or more generally knowledge or "know" (vědět), so medvěd is literally the one who knows where the honey is. Perhaps this wasn't restricted to just Slavic languages in the past.
@@davidioanhedges Medved is Russian for a bear. The ending -ev/-ova/-ovo is used to show belonging, so Medvedev would mean "he that belongs to the bear", or in other case "son of a bear"
European explorers of Madagascar did not dub them "lemurs" because of their cute faces. They did so because the animals make scary cries in the night (to communicate with each other) that sounded to Europeans like ghosts.
Gorillas are liars too. When Koko was asked by the anthropologist who taught her sign language (I forget her name now) what happened to the sink which was ripped from the wall, Koko said her kitten did it! The lie was really important though. It shows gorillas have individuation and realise that other people (or gorillas) don't know what they know.
How about some Welsh insect names: Woodlouse = Moch bach y coed (little wood pigs) Ladybird/Ladybug=Bywch goch gota (spotty red cow) And my personal fave is a term for a: Butterfly = Iâr fach yr haf (Little chicken of the summer) Keep up the excellent work!
Another animal word is 'porcelain' which literally means 'little pig'. When Europeans first saw porcelain they were amazed at how smooth and shiny it was. They named it after the Latin word for a large seashell that cameos were carved from, since the interior had a similar extremely smooth and shiny surface. The opening of the seashell, in turn was called 'little pig' because it reminded the Romans of a certain part of female anatomy which in both Latin and Greek was colloquially called 'little pig'.
In german language name of german breed ,Great Dane' is called , Deutsche Dogge '. When i was young, every large mastiffstyle dog was called Dogge. Usual word is Hund, you call some dogs hound.
@@brittakriep2938 They were other breeds like Englische Docken, Englische Tocken or Englischer Hund. But Docken and therefor Dogge came from the english word dog. so dog came first
Hi guys! At my grandfather's house in Louisiana the surrounding piney woods were full of ticks. When any of us kids would come in from playing, the first thing my mom would do is make us strip off our clothes and get inspected for ticks. One way to remove them without leaving the mouth parts of the tick imbedded in the skin was to take a match, light it, let it burn for a few seconds, blow it out, then immediately touch it to the tick's abdomen. This caused them to retract the soda straw-like mouth parts. Then you could remove the tick easily.
When I was a kid and we came in from the woods or the fields, we'd usually check our heads for ticks. If we found one, we used a cotton ball soaked in rubbing alcohol to remove it safely. Those were dog ticks, which were relatively easy to spot; the ones we worry about today are the tiny deer ticks which carry Lyme disease.
Wow! Thankyou for this tip! In Germany we have to be very careful about ticks! We carry a tick removing card. It us made of plastic, looks like a credit card and has a special slit in it to pass between the tick and the skin. Then lever the tick out and pull the mandibles out.
Methods involving application of heat or any substance (alcohol, butter etc.) are generally advised against nowadays, since it can cause the tick to regurgitate its stomach contents, thus increasing the chances of transaferring pathogens to the host. Applying alcohol to the skin *after* removal of the tick might be a good idea to disinfect the skin surface (although would probably have no effect on whatever pathogenic material might be deposited under the skin).
orangutan = orang hutan = "person of the forest". No suggestion of the person being either male or female, young or old. Bahasa has no gender, like Hungarian, Turkish, ...
'Man' and its cognates (in Germanic languages) was originally genderless, meaning 'human', with additions (e.g. 'wif-', leof-' to indicate gender). This inclusive meaning lingered in English, but has become confused and overlooked with the parallel rise and domination of the masculine-only meaning.
You were good until you used the word "bahasa," which simply means "language" (any language) in Malay and Indonesian. For example, in Malay, English is Bahasa Inggeris and an English person is "orang Inggeris", whereas Malay is Bahasa Melayu and a Malay is orang Melayu. By the way, although utan is a way to pronounce hutan (jungle) in Malay, just as 'ot is a way to pronounce hot in English, Malays carefully distinguish between Orang Hutan, who are actually human beings who live in the jungle, and orangutan, the ape. Also, about gender in Malay: absolutely right that there isn't any gender built into nouns. The way to distinguish a male animal from a female animal is to use "jantan" for male and "betina" for female.
Dandelion - my grandmother used to call them "pittly-beds", because drinking dandelion tea would make you "pittle" (or urinate) the bed. We're from north eastern England for context.
The common French name for it is 'Pissenlit' ("pee in bed") - even though our word 'Dandelion' is borrowed from French. Apparently 'Dent-de-lion' is also used as a more polite alternative.
The German for "Placenta" may translate as "womb cake", but the word "Placenta" actually does mean "cake". Placenta cake was a dessert in ancient times, and we adopted it many years later.
However, Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, means 'cat' in Malay; but the town is actually named for a hill (Bukit mata kuching) which was a hill (Bukit) where a fruit known as 'cat eyes' - 'mata kuching' grew
To me, the most interesting thing about the 'moose'/'elk' story is how little time it took before the British English speakers were convinced that 'moose' was the correct English word for the animal. The word 'moose' of course doesn't show up in English until English speakers encounter the same animal in North America. At that point, most English people have never seen a real live European elk (moose) since they were already extinct on their home islands, so the first large horned animal they come across in North America they call 'elk' - probably because it reminds them of descriptions of European elks and think this animal must be something similar, rather than actually thinking this new animal is the same thing. Meeting with the animal that actually is the same as a European elk, they instead adopt a form of a native American word for it. But here's the part that interests me most: Educated Brits in the UK realise from the start that this is a confusing naming practice and put up a brave fight to make people say 'elk' about at least the European elk instead of moose. And they almost succeed. If you look at dictionaries of BRITISH English, until at least the 1950s (and my guess is, even later), they recommend this way of using the word. Many older Brits I've spoken to have agreed that this is the correct usage, and confirmed to me that at least when they talk about the animal here in Europe they use the word 'elk'. However, get anyone under the age of seventy in Britain and they will say 'moose'. In just a generation or so, they have completely forgotten that the animal was ever called 'elk' and if I bring it up they often try to correct me saying I have it mixed up with the North American elks that are not the same animal.
@@donwald3436 I doubt very much that the elk/moose you meet in the woods will object to whatever you call it - so, no! It's not like calling them indian. 😄 But it's fun to follow the development - first we had one English word for the animal. Then we had two, one each side of the Atlantic. Then the newer word was imported to the old word's territory and caused academic confusion, so people thought: 'We need to fix this in dictionaries!' and for a while it looks like they are going to win. Then, in just a generation, the newer word takes the lead and almost completely crushes the old one.
Some advice for Jess. The 'qu' in French is not pronounced like the 'qu' in English. In English we pronounce it 'kw', but in French is is pronounced 'k', or 'c'.
The same is mostly true in German, where it is "Fledermaus". "Fleder-" on its own doesn't mean anything in modern German (maybe it did several centuries ago, dunno...), but just from the sounds if it it evokes very strong "flight-related" associations as there is "fliegen" (to fly), "Flügel" (wing), Feder (feather). Interestingly also English native speakers seem to perceive a bat as being something like a mouse with wings, since there are several cartoons that are a "play" on that.
I generally say in reply that we are not vegetables or minerals so must be animals. Hover, I have heard some people use a 4th description. Human, animal vegetable or mineral!🤔
I studied a bit of Norwegian before a trip last summer. A phrase that I recall (but might misspell) is “Bjørnen spiser elgen,” “The bear is eating the moose.” So Norwegian is one of the languages in which a form of “elk” is used to mean “moose.” I never got to use the phrase at all. Even though I took a train across the mountains, I never saw a bear or a moose, much less see the former eating the latter.
@@steve-4045 I've never used that phrase, either. 😂 I've seen mooses, but not bears. Another phrase: "Elgen spiser epler i hagen hver høst." ="The moose eats apples in the garden every autumn." Side note: "Elg" or "elgen" is often used as collective singular. Could be one, could be several.
From a biological standpoint this actually makes sense, simply because cat ears are attuned to very high pitched sounds (which their prey make). Now we could narrow our vocal cords and go 'peep peep' to get their attention, but a psst does the trick. They simply listen out for this frequency more than deeper ones.
I wonder if there's an etymological thread similar to calling pigs with "sooey" or cows with "come boss" (though those both connect to the Latinate names, though I guess su is equally Germanic)--and I see some online etymologies that posit that puss was derived from the call.
In Dutch a female cat is called a 'poes' and the male is a 'kater'. They are both also called 'kat', which is the neutral form. Regardless of the etymology, I was taught that the Dutch 'luipaard' (leopard) doesn't mean 'lui paard' (lazy horse) but 'luip aard', sneaky character. Dandelion tea is delicious and definitely useful as a diuretic, so not to be drunk after a certain time in the day for exactly that reason! Nowadays Salukis have their own horses and they work together with a hawk. They ride to the hunting ground, because otherwise they're tired out if they have to run there. The moment the hawk takes off to find prey in the desert the Saluki keeps its eyes on the bird and takes off once the bird starts to circle in the air to show where the prey is. They still hunt this way in the Middle East!
@@ftumschk In french, we only use "pissenlit", not at all "dent de lion". Thank you for the french etymology and the attempt of english-based phonetics, although the nasal french "en" sound is impossible to translate with an english sound. Diolch 🙂
44:26 Pronunciation tip: The German "Dachs" (badger) just sounds like "dux" /daks/; the "-chs" is the German way of writing the "x" sound (cf. "Fuchs" (fox), "Lachs" (salmon, lax), "sechs" (six)). The dachshund is commonly called "Dackel" in German; "Dachshund" has become rare.
On the subject of hidden cows, the legal term "chattel", meaning moveable property, comes from the same root as "cattle", both ultimately deriving from the Latin "caput", meaning "head". And of course in English we might talk about, say, "forty head of cattle", which is a bit etymologically redundant.
Pig may actually have come from the word for red clay in England, pygg. The term pygg bank pre-existed the pig shape, for example, because they were terra cotta made from pygg. It is possible that pigs got their name from often being red from being covered with pygg, in their pens.
Are you sure about Schnauzer? The verb "schnauzen" comes from "Schnauze" (snout). "Schnauzer" is also the short version of "Schnauzbart" (moustache; literally snout beard). The snout of this dog indeed looks quite special, it protects them from vermin. For that they don’t need specific barking characteristics in contrast to hunting dogs who needed to bark while hunting due to being quickly out of sight in forests etc. They were bred as a vermin killer, so it makes more sense to name them after their snout than after their barking.
This channel is so much fun. It's always a dilemma whether to watch it as soon as the video posts or wait until the end of the day when I can relax and take it all in.
Correct! The funny thing is that "elk" actually refers to moose first, and what we call "elk" in the USA aren't actually elk at all, but rather just a type of large deer. And the word "deer" in English also comes from the same root word as "animal" in Nordic languages "djur", "dier", etc
@@ShadowDrakkento make things more confusing is that a subspecies of the American elk lives in Siberia and is called Wapiti, which is derived from a Native American name, despite there already being a Mongolian name for the animal, maral. The Russians call the Asian subspecies maral, but call the American one wapiti.
@@ShadowDrakken Well in older Nordic dyr was by hunters referring to deer specifically. It only later became the word for animals, and the prefix Dyre- is still preserved in Danish and some swedish dialects as the meat of deer, in for instance Dyrekølle.
I'm not a zoologist, but if I understand the difference correctly, when you show the pictures of the moose and the elk, that elk is what a North American elk looks like, while a European elk which you find mostly in Scandinavia is actually a moose, especially visible looking at the antlers. The German word for both North American moose and European elk is "Elch".
I recently discovered that some sources say that the word "penguin" is based on the Welsh "pen-gwyn" literally "white head" - the Welsh name given to the great auk.
One explanation I've heard for why America Bison are called Buffalo is that when they were being slaughtered by the millions, many of their hides were shipped to Buffalo NY. Where they were made into coats commonly called Buffalo Coats because that's where they were made. The name of the garments morphed into the name for the animals. So the animals were called after the city, not vice versa.
I'm pretty sure that's an invented folk etymology, because Buffalo, New York was named for Buffalo Creek, which was first recorded as the name of that particular watercourse in 1764, and the creek itself was most likely named for bison.
It's interesting about the original word for bear being lost and replaced with a word meaning brown thing. In the Irish language, the names of many dangerous/sacred animals stopped being used and alternatives took their place. Like the original word for wolf being replaced by "mac tíre" meaning son of the land; or the original word for spider being replaced with "damhán alla" meaning fierce little stag or ox. There are many other totem animals whose names have been replaced in Irish as well.
1. My favourite garden path sentence: "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana." 2. The Dutch word for leopard is "luipaard", which obviously has the same etymology, only the literal meaning is, confusingly, "lazy horse". Which makes no sense at all. 3. We have the word "pissebed" in Dutch, but here it's a woodlouse instead of a dandelion. Not really sure why.
The "lazy horse" for "leopard" was used in a comedy sketch "Wat als Van Dale een echte klootzak was" (˜ "What if Webster was an absolute asshole"), in which an adventurer says "Sir, I found a fast feline" and the dictionary creator replies "Fast feline? Hm. We shall call it... lazy horse!"
Fun fact: we are slowly but surely learning that language is not unique to humans. I'm not talking about just body language, which is inherent to most animals, but verbal language that includes dialects, names, and enough structur to be judged as being taught instead of instinctual vocalizations. Personally I find it quite beautiful how the boarders we set to distinguish the human species from animals become blurrier and blurrier.
Many years ago my daily drive into work on a military installation in the western U.S. passed a small, marvelously symmetrical, stand-alone mountain that was called Squaw’s Tit. The idealized ideation that underlay the name was readily grasped. The frank Anglo-Saxon name of the feature has no doubt been altered in recent decades. It must be wondered if a similar nomenclatural fate is in store for Western Wyoming’s more craggy, higher, and more well-known peaks.
What distinguishes humans from other animals is the amount of information we can pass from one generation to the next. This is largely thanks to the complexity of our spoken and written languages.
As someone who actually studied this in depth in college for a long time, the only (and I do mean only) thing which seperates HomoSapiens from the rest of the animal kingdom is simply our ability to ask the question "What makes us different?" (and not the physical act of asking it, but rather the formulation of the philosophical process which leads to the distinction in the firat place).
But not all humans are capable of formulating this philosophical process. This doesn’t make them less than human. Why indeed should there be something that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom? We already have our biological separation. Isn’t this sufficient?
The family "Homo Sapiens" is just one type of Homonid, so it not only separates us from the animal kingdom, it also separates us from the other homonids (although based on recent discoveries, this may not be true).
That's one of the things I love about other languages, with stricter rules. It's brings comfort to know what's correct, what's not, and that there's no way to misunderstand a statement if it's written following all rules.
In English we use dog for one animal and dogs for more than one animal. In Polish, there are three forms depending on the number of dogs: one, (two through four), and five or more. Having separate spellings of the noun based on the number of animals implies dogs were important in Polish culture.
Speaking of different words for "dog", I've always been fascinated that the Polish word is "pies" (pronounced in one syllable as "pyess") but the word in Russian - which you'd think would be similar - is "sobaka" (собака) - not to be confused with "ciupaga" (pronounced "tsewPAHgah") which is a Polish mountaineer's axe-headed walking stick. I'm not fluent enough in these languages to research the etymology.
@@ChasFink Собака is from an Iranian word related to σπακα, the only attested Median word (other Median words are reconstructed from being borrowed into Persian and other languages). There is пёс, but it's not as common.
@@paulohagan3309 I don't know. Ossetia is on the border between Georgia and Russia, but the Ossetian word is completely different: куыдз. Собака is attested in Old East Slavic.
Several years back I saw a headline from somewhere in Scandinavia about an elk and was very confused, and then looked at the article and it was a moose. The explanation I found online is that elk was originally used to refer to that animal, but when settlers in America who had never seen one before saw a different huge deer, they started calling it by that name
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "moggy" is a rather recent word, first cited in the early 1900s. The OED gives no firm etymology, but suggests it might derive from "Maggie". Apart from being a diminutive of Margaret, a "maggie" was once a Scottish slang term for a young girl, regardless of her name.
Interesting question. I started looking at wiktionary (OK, I know it’s not the greatest authority) and it connected the word hog to hewing, or cutting chunks. Which is still used in the sense of roughing out stuff, come to think of it. “Hog out the mortices with a drill first, then chisel the sides.” To hog out metalwork means make it all from a blank by cutting, machining, rather than moulds or hammer work.
Orang utan, from Orang Hutan is just man of the forest, or more specifically 'forest people'. Pagolin is from pengguling; guling means to roll up (e.g. a mat), pe- (morphed to peng- in front of words that starts with g) is the prefix that is similar to the english suffix -er, so penggulling can be translated roll upper, or roller upper.
10:41 when you mentioned that shark has germanic roots that mean something like villain, i right away had to think about the german "Schurke" - which means exactly that
Some younger Germans have started using the Americal English "hi!" as a greeting. My German father-in-law always complains about ever-increasing "Denglish", and when he'd hear my kids using it, he'd grumpily ask "so where's the shark?" as the German for shark is "Hai".
The German word for placenta (Mutterkuchen < Mutter 'mother' + Kuchen 'cake') might be related to the word placenta from Latin. In Latin, placenta actually meant a flat type of cake, with the English word placenta being a figurative description of the placenta. So German may have calque-translated the Latin word and then added on mother to make it more specific to motherhood and pregnancy.
It probably wasn't an addition in German, exactly, but rather "placenta uterina" being the Latin medical term when it was originally calqued, with the qualifier subsequently dropped in other languages.
Its just the word for cake. Placenta is a cake not often used now but it is still a word for cake. Mother cake isnt even related to placenta its just mother and cake. Placenta is just saying something in a way that is demure ..oh your birthing pancake has plopped on the floor madam. Or i see your gee muffin is slipping out there maam! 😂
@@indef2defabsolutely. We have old 2800s medicall books and thats exactly what it says! It has little pictures you can lift up the flaps i adore it like a pop up book.
Placenta is a layin medical term for the English word 'afterbirth'; it seems to me that in the last century or so we have been replacing English words that might have been considered slightly rude, or not used in polite conversation with latin medicalised equivalents. Other examples would include: uterus, vagina, penis
If you asked me to name the dog that meant "Lion Dog" then a shih-tzu would literally be the last dog on the list. I could list every other possible breed. Shih-tzu would be the last one. I can't think of a less lion-like dog. But then again, my mom's old shih-tzu thought he was pitbull and he would have eaten you if he could have. He was literally dangerous to small animals and children. He loved the hell out of me, though. I was the only person besides my parents who could be around him without walking away with shredded ankles.
I really love the series, I do. I like the hosts, the way Jes tilts her head in amazement like a puppy and Rob’s full frontal nerdity. There’s just one thing: Jes’s vocal fry; the croaky, champagne cork about to pop sound she makes at the end of sentences. I can’t help myself imitating it.
There's always at least one comment on my voice, and all I can say is that I'm content with the way I speak and don't plan to change it. Appreciate your kind words on the show, and thank you for listening! "Full frontal nerdity" is fabulous. :) - Jess
@@WordsUnravelled Jess, there is no problem with your voice. The point is that the vocal fry of USA voices indeed sounds so strange for european ears... As this podcast is based on the comparison between UK and US english, your typical vocal fry is thus fully part of it, as well as the perfect stylish UK accent of Rob. That's you and that's all! And we love it!
Don’t forget the arachnids are related to Arachne, who was the weaver with the nerve to challenge the goddess. She won, but was turned into a spider for her hubris.
I was reading a diary written by the French explorer Samuel de Champlain. Champlain was one of the earliest explorers of Canada and a kind of "founding father" of French Canada. In his diary, he refers to a river in which he found "many hippopotami." Champlain was a very down-to-earth man, not given to flights of fancy, and usually very accurate in his descriptions. But I figured it out. Champlain had a classical education, and would have been familiar with the Greek word "hippopotamus." Of course, he would have never seen one, but read descriptions of a large animal, comparable to a horse, that spent a lot of its time in rivers. He was talking about Moose! Btw, in Canada, we more often use the word "wapiti" instead of "elk," It comes from Cree, the most widely spoken First Nations language in Canada. It is also the name used without exception in Canadian French.
Keep in mind that a "panther" isn't really one specific thing. It's a term applied to the melanistic (dark-colored or "black") variant of both the jaguar and the leopard. It has come to more commonly refer to a melanistic jaguar, however, because they thrive better than melanistic leopards and are therefore more common (though still quite rare). You're just more likely to be successful being a black animal trying to camouflage in heavy jungles and dense rainforests as a South American jaguar than you are being a black animal trying to camouflage in dry grass as an African leopard.
It's my understanding that Panther (genus Panthera) is a group that includes Lion, Tiger, Jaguar, Leopard, Cougar/Mountain Lion/Puma, Snow Leopard - regardless of colouration
A panther is not necessarily a black panther. That is not and has never been the meaning of the word "panther". And it is not associated more with jaguars than any other big cat.
As some have pointed out, there is the scientific genus Panthera, which includes a variety of large cat species. They're correct in that. Those who say you're wrong, however, are incorrect. If they check a variety of dictionaries, such as the Cambridge, Oxford, and others, they'll find several definitions of the word, and that your usage is correct and usually the first definition given. That is, a panther is a leopard, usually a black one. Some will add that there's also a specific North American usage, where panther also refers to a puma/cougar. So there is definitely a scientific genus term, but in everyday usage there are several possibilities, but the most common is usually black leopard.
As a kid growing up in rural West of Ireland we called dandelions ''pissybeds'' (when Mammy was not listening) and we blew the 'clocks' seedheads to tell the time of day. We also knew that if you hid a dandelion in someone's bed they would wet the bed during the night. We believed the milk-white sap which comes from the stem was a treatment for warts. So it is interesting to hear that dandelions are also known as Cankerwort as 'canker' can refer to a fungating or verrucous (wart-like) skin tumour or a similar growth on plants.
A card sharp is a person who uses skill and/or deception to win at card games. However, many say "card shark". And yet, the latter meaning seems to be the original one, according to this video.
Great, as usual. The "sss" sound associated with cats may be because it's a sound they respond to because of the high overtones. Here in Jamaica, they're always called "puss". If you say puss repeatedly, "puss puss puss puss puss", any cat around will immediately look at you.
The contemporary German word "Schurke" should be the descendant of the ancestor that gave "shark" its name. But now here is the fun thing: The contemporary German word for "shark", "Hai" can also be used to describe a ruthless, scoundrelish person commonly in compound words as e.g. in "Miethai" (a cutthroat landlord).
Some younger Germans have started using the Americal English "hi!" as a greeting. My German father-in-law always complains about ever-increasing "Denglish", and when he'd hear my kids using it, he'd grumpily ask "so where's the shark?" as the German for shark is "Hai". I'm old enough to remember (when the movie Jaws came out), that there was an SNL paradoy about a "land shark" th-cam.com/video/p_NS2H55dxI/w-d-xo.htmlsi=0Ol7Kshtd56BXwL4 .
Schrödinger's elk: it is and is not a moose! Interesting, how the way we see animals is dependent on the language we use. In Finnish, elk is "Canadian moose" (kanadanhirvi), red deer is "German moose" (saksanhirvi) and the deer family is "moose animals" (hirvieläimet), a moose (hirvi) being the primary reference point, also associated with the words for monster (hirviö) and terrible (hirveä). Also, Finnish for roe deer is "forest capricorn" (metsäkauris), while the Swedish equivalent (rådyr) literaly means "raw animal".
I am confused by the 'capricorn' in your translation of 'metsäkauris.' Almost exclusively, "Capricorn" is used in English as a capitalized proper noun referring to the astrological birth sign, and the people born under it. The uncapitalized Latinate common noun 'capricorn' meaning 'goat or goat-like horned animal' does exist, but is exceedingly rare in use. So is a 'metsäkauris' a 'forest person born under the astrological sign of the sea goat,' or a 'forest goat-like horned animal?' And if it is indeed the case that the Finnish word for roe deer references the zodiac, how did that come to be? Does the end of their typical gestation period coincide with the astrological sign's ascendance?
@@virginiabarnsley1658 I thought of that, but when I input the Finnish 'kauris' into Google Translate, it does indeed return the word "Capricorn," in the astrological sense, as the primary translation, as well as the word "goat" as a secondary translation, which is exactly the ambiguity that had me wondering to begin with.
Fun genetic biology fact: if we were to consider every animal that we commonly identify “fish” as the genetic boundaries of the animal group “fish”(which is to say, a living group defined by their earliest common ancestor), than it would at a minimum contain all vertebrates. This is considering that most common colloquial definition of fish to be all vertebrates with gills and fins, i.e. bony fish and cartilaginous fish, who share their common ancestor with all other other vertebrates. This is also the most limited genetic boundary for a commonly identified group of “fish” every other one would only be larger and include more animals. For example, including all aquatic crustaceans and mollusks (shellfish, loosely), would result in a group sharing an earliest common ancestor with all bilateria (animals with developmental bilateral body plan symmetry) and expanding the group to include every animal which we use the word “fish” as part of its common english name (I.e jellyfish, starfish) the group likely included all animals, period.
Furthermore: there was a man who couldn't decide about the plural of mongoose - so he wrote to the local pet-shop saying that he wanted to buy a mongoose, then added a postscript that he wanted a second one.
The "psss" sound you use to attract the attention of cats works precisly BECAUSE it sounds like the cat's warning sound to other cats. The all turn their heads towards you when they hear it.
I suspect the word 'dog' is onomatopoeic, the sound of the animal's bark. Then there's the word for dog in the Aboriginal language Mbabaram: it's 'dog'.
I was going to make a comment bringing this up until I saw this one. I will add that Rob said that all instances of "dog" in other languages come from English. In this case that is wrong. The Mbabaram word is not related to English at all. Mbabaram as a language has spent the last few thousand years isolated in Australia with no historical contact with other language (besides the one other aboriginee language and English much much later on obviously). The fact that English and Mbabaram share the exact same word for the exact same thing is most likely a complete coincidence. That's one of those useless fun facts that I love to bring up when the opportunity arises.
That is the sort of trenchant observation that suddenly switches light bulbs on. Dog might very well be an instance of a single syllable onomatopoeic representation of canine vocalization.
In German, a "Dogge" (pronounced DOG-GUH) is a specific dog breed of large mastiff sighthounds originating in Medieval Germany for hunting bears, wild boars, and deer. For some reason, this dog breed is called Great Dane in English despite there being no connection to Denmark. To distinguish these from another smaller mastiff breed called "Englische (Bull)Dogge" (lit. "English (bull)dog"), they are more specifically called "Deutsche Dogge" (lit. "German dog") in German-speaking lands.
@@jonrolfson1686 "trenchant" well, if we were playing scrabble you'd have 8 points right there. Seriously, though it's very rare that I have to Google a word so good job lol. "Vigorous or incisive" or in other words "sharp". I'm going to have to use that one at some point in the future
@@berlindude75 out of curiosity, I did some research on why we call it a Great Dane. Apparently it's translated from the French "le Grande Danois". The story goes that a French naturalist visiting Denmark saw one there and named it that and that name just stuck. We borrowed it from French.
The dog, pig, hog question raises the question of whether this is a Pict ending that has survived. We have so few words from that language that, as far as I know, we don't know its language group fully. It may even be from the pre Celtic ice age cultures of the region. The genetics implies ice age and definitely pre Celt.
You have it backwards, a placenta is first a flat cake, it is secondarily and by comparison, the connection between baby and womb, because after delivery it resembles a placenta in shape. The English alternative is afterbirth.
Regarding "dog": The etymology of Old English *docga revisited "Its origin remains one of the great mysteries of English etymology" according to Etymonline. "In fact, historians of English seem to have lost interest in the word, at best commenting on its form [...]. Since no etymological source suggests itself, dog has apparently been shelved together with other words of dubious derivation" [3]. In 2006, Gąsiorowski "challenge[d] this agnostic attitude" [3]. I think he successfully found the correct Proto-Indo-European etymological root of dog along with its cognates in other languages. Proto-Indo-European *dheu-4 indeed meant several dull colors like "brown, grey, dun", and a parallel evolution from "brownish-grey, dun" to "mongrel, cur" as the informal name for a dog can be found in Polish burek "dog, mutt, a farmyard watchdog" as he noticed. However, a more obvious etymology for dog from that same root can be found. From Middle English dog, dogge (after 1200), from Old English *docga ("dog", literally "little mutt, little mongrel") [1], from Old English dōc, dōcincel ("bastard", literally "mongrel, hybrid, mixed") [2], from Proto-Germanic *dūjan- ("to tremble") [4], from Proto-Indo-European *dheu-4, dheua- (IEW 261-267) "swirl (together), muddy, cloudy, unclean (water), stun, dizziness, vortex, darkening, bland, dull, to stir up, suffering from spinning sickness", hence "hybrid, mixed". Latin bigener "biracial", hence literally "hybrid, mongrel, mixed", is glossed as "doc" in the 10th century [2]. Hence the semantic evolution is from Proto-Indo-European "to swirl" to "mixed", to Old English "hybrid" to "mutt" as "bastard", to Middle English "mutt" as "dog" already completely fossilize i.e. without any hint of the meaning "hybrid". Old English dōc "bastard" died out around 1050 in the transition to Middle English as Middle English dog arose in use around 1200. The colors meant by Old English dox ("dark, dun, brownish-grey") need not have participated in the formation and evolution of the word dog, contrary to Gąsiorowski's hypothesis, as the word dog likely originated from the meaning "mongrel" already embodied by the Old English word dōc ("bastard"). References [1] *docga is inferred from attested genitive plural docgena in a Prudentius' Psychomachia gloss to Latin canum from circa 1050. [3] [2] David A. E. Pelteret. Anglo-Saxon History: Basic Readings. "Apart from hornung and the adjective cyfesboren, "born of a concubine", the only other recorded Old English word for a concubine's son is the rare and obscure noun dōc and its diminutive dōcincel. There are two recorded instances of dōc and one of dōcincel in Old English and all are found in glosses. Dōcincel glosses nothus [Latin for bastard, from the Greek nothos, meaning bastard, spurious] in British Library, Harley MS. 526, fo. 15v, a 10th century manuscript of Bede's Metrical Life of St. Cuthbert with contemporary glosses; another early-10th-century manuscript of the same work, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS. 183, glosses nothus in the same context as hornungbrothor. In both cases the allusion is to King Aldfrith of Northumbria, the son of Oswiu by an Irish concubine. This same Aldfrith is described by the homilist Ælfric as cyfesborena brothor, "a brother born of a concubine". The remaining two glosses are from manuscripts of the late Anglo-Saxon period. One is in the 11th-century British Library, Cotton Cleopatra MS. A.iii, which glosses nothus as suthan wind, oththe dooc, hornungsunu, "south wind or bastard, illegitimate son" [in Ancient Greek, nothos meant bastard, and notos meant south wind, from Southern Pre-Greek]; the other is in a 10th-century glossary of difficult Latin words, British Library, Harley MS. 3376, which translates the Latin bigener, "produced from two different races, hybrid, mongrel", as aworden uel doc. The linking of dōc with aworden, past participle of aweorthan, "to cease to be, become insipid or worthless, decline" suggests that the word had pejorative associations and may speak for the decline in status of the offspring of a concubine in the late Anglo-Saxon period. Perhaps it is also significant that the Old English vocabulary of bastardy did not long survive the Norman Conquest, for neither dōc nor hornung appear in the Middle English Dictionary, and cyfes, "concubine", had a scarcely longer life. The Normans, of course, had their mistresses, but the specifically Anglo-Saxon traditions concerning concubines and their offspring may have fallen into decline after the Conquest and the vocabulary of concubinage died with the custom." [3] Piotr Gąsiorowski. The etymology of Old English *docga. 2006. DOI 10.1515/IDGF.2006.015 [4] Guus Kroonen. Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic. Source: Celtic Lexicon.
Please do one on Australian two syllable slang (and other elements of dialect) just to see what happens when Celts, Angles and a host of multi-cultural ethnicities are parked on an island and have to get along with being ... lucky. You guys are obviously happy and we love the fun you have with this stuff. Other suggestions: accents and pronunciation across the anglosphere; thesaurus synonyms and the subtle differences; the impact of writing medium on the message of words; would you like a french fried voice fry with that; Chinglish; Indian dialects of English - isn't it; words for colonizing other planets; words for renewable energy systems; politician word salad and deploying the passive voice to play us/them victim stuff; an expose of verbs in different modes eg subjunctive - exhortative - declaritive ... and anything that makes Rob go red :). You guys are beautiful - a joy to the heart - keep going and never stop.
Another 'animal' story. In Québec we have the expression: "Parler anglais comme une vache espagnole" (speak English like a Spanish cow). And it means speak english poorly as a second language. The original saying (in France) is: "Parler français comme un basque espagnol" (speak French like a Spanish-Basque). Presumably, the locals didn't know anything about the Basques region straddling the French and Spanish border.
One of my late father's favorite dad jokes was to ask... (needs an English accent) Q. What's the difference between a buffalo and a bison? A. You can't wash your hands in a buffalo. {groan)
“Worm” was originally used not only for what we call a worm, but also for snakes and dragons. The monstrous creatures in Germanic (including Anglo-Saxon) legends and sagas that get called “dragon” in contemporary English translations are invariably called some etymological variant of “worm” in the original text.
Yes, and ... snakes & dragons were more often called "wyrms", rather than "worms". That said - there are instances of the the latter, eg: the Lambton Worm
The German word for Great Dane is "Deutsche Dogge", which backwashed from the Old English word "docga", which referred to a powerful breed of dog. The word "docga" is also the root of the modern English word "dog". Riffing on that, the "Dogger Bank" was named after the doggers, medieval Dutch fishing boats especially used for catching cod. It's a bit old-fashioned, but "frosch", German for frog, sounds a bit like "frosh" used to refer to high school/college freshman ... but it's unrelated.
Your delightful banter has made this my favourite YT channel. Your combination of plain "niceness" and wit and erudition really encapsulates the essence of what I, a Norwegian, think of as "hygge". 🙂 At 6:47 Jess says "English doesn't use Greek plurals". What about words like "stigma - stigmata" and other words ending in -ma?
The issue with Fish as a category is that just including all the things that are "obviously proper fish" and excluding things like jellyfish, lobsters and other non-fish seafood - includes very distantly related species, and is a category that includes all of the subspecies of them also includes all land animals ...
Not sure I understood what you're trying to say... Also, this is not exclusive to English. For example, German for octopus is Tintenfisch (ink fish). Romance languages made an effort and didn't get lazy, so they use fish to refer to fish and fish-shaped animals only (as far as I know). Many fish, though, have unique names that don't include the word fish at all.
Well, if you want to identify as a fish... I think that we (mammals) and other land-dwelling vertebrates (which I assume is what you mean by 'land animals') are far enough down the evolutionary path to be in zoological classes of their own of our own, and not classified as a kind of fish.
You mentioned the word "peculiar". There's a town in western Missouri named Peculiar, and the story is that when they decided to incorporate the town, they chose several other names first, but were told that those were already taken. They were told that the name should be "unique or peculiar", so that's what they chose.
Interesting thing though: in the German dialect my dad grew up speaking, dandelions are likewise called "bed-pissers", but in High German, they're called "Lion's tooth"...
I've liked Words Unravelled from the start, but I think you guys are getting better at it. It seems more comfortable, like you know each other better. Super fun. Love it.
I get the same impression, moreso with Jess than with Rob. Rob has his own channel, and to my knowledge Jess does not, so I wonder if that has something to do with it. It felt like a few episodes ago a switch was flipped and the show hit its stride.
Can confirm. I did the reverse, picked up at episode 10 I think, and went back to watch the rest. Awesome work.
If I wasn’t so interested in the subject matter, I could turn the sound down and just enjoy their smiles.
The interaction between a gay guy and a female is always interesting
@@ZA-wm6mmRob has a wife he refers to "her"
How does a lawyer survive in shark infested waters?
Professional courtesy.
Very, VERY sick of that.
I have a friend who is ambisinistrous - totally useless with both hands!
Heh, typical right handed bias in that word. Ned Flanders was right, er, I mean correct!
* that would be "ambisinistral", I think
🤣
I'm often described as having "2 left feet". So would I be pedosinistral / sinistropedal ? Pedobisinistral? Bipedosinistral? Sinistrobipedal?
@@CheeseWyrmJust put on your dancing shoes like no one is watching.
"The more you try to understand the rules of language, the more you realize that there just aren't any." So perfect.
"English is not a language. English is three smaller languages in a trenchcoat trying to get into the adult movies."
There are many many many rules in English. It's just that no two agree.
@@JimFortune It also depends on who compiled the dictionaries and grammar books. Being a language of sets of peoples both conquered and conquering, yet somehow managing to find a way to get along, the result has become a macaronic mix.
I love how virtually each episode includes a "We can cut that..." moment which then doesn't get cut. They make the episodes (even) more charming and fun!
Undoubtedly there are numerous other similar moments that we don't see.
Have you considered doing a show on words that appear vulgar but aren’t, such as bumfiddler, shuttlecock, and vagitus? An additional bonus would be to see Rob in the crimson-red mode for an entire show. Thanks for the great videos!
Insults: th-cam.com/video/60VKgSd3wM0/w-d-xo.html
@joet4713 Great idea!💡 That would be rather titillating!😂
American elk are named after european elk (moose) by english settlers who had the word ancestrally, but had never seen one in centuries. They just remembered that it was a big deer, so they named the biggest deer they found in their new environment elk and called it a day.
The moose (Alces alces) is called "elk" or something similar in a bunch of germanic languages.
German: Elch, swedish: älg, danish: elg, dutch: eland, etc.
So, english speakers in North America using the woth "elk" for the wapiti (Cervus canadensis) is the source of confusion.
The dutch "eland" is also used for big antelopes in Arcrica.
@@lakrids-pibe Alce as the scientific name for the Moose/Elk (Alces alces) is also the word for the animal in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian etc. And the french élan. And it has the same root as Elk.
That's basically what torpor8652 said there. English settlers named the North American Elk(Wapiti) after the animal called "Elk" in Europe, and what the Europeans call "Elk" is called a "Moose" in North America. Moose comes from the Algonquian word moosu, one of the Native American words for what Europeans call "Elk".
Exactly. TY for providing the algonquin etymology, didn't know where "moose" came from
Elch
I was astonished that you did not mention that "deer" (der in OE) originally meant "animal" and continued to do so for centuries. Shakespeare mentions "mice and other small deer." Of course, in German, "Tier" means animal.
And in Dutch it's "dier".
I think Rob talked about the word "deer" meaning "animal" in a video on his own on his TH-cam channel, RobWords.
In Swedish it's "djur".
If memory serves, Holofernes and Nathaniel have a lengthy and pedantic discussion about the names of fallow deer at various ages in Shakespeare's 'Love's Labour's Lost'. The words 'sore', 'sorel' and pricket spring to mind, but not stag.
And in Norwegian it's 'dyr'.
If you are looking for a German counterpart for "shark" meaning a bad person, it would most likely be "Schurke".
Yes, it's pretty much the same in Dutch "Schurk"
And "skurk" in swedish.
@@aliaskvasthildaAnd in Afrikaans, with the same spelling as in Swedish.
Never knew of the link between it and shark!
I learned that word in German class, but hadn’t connected it to Shark. Interesting.
Malay speaker here, from Malaysia. No, orangutan doesn't have the connotation of "old". "Orang" simply means person/man and "hutan" / "utan" means forest. Man of the forest.
Also, the word pangolin comes the Malay "pengguling", meaning "one who rolls up". But interestingly, the modern Malay word for pangolin is "tenggiling". I don't know how that came to be though.
Never knew I was a pengguling, but happy to learn something new
And let’s not forget that in Italian, bufalo is the male animal, and bufala is the female. So bufalo mozzarella is… unlikely. It’s mozzarella di bufala.
"Unlikely" does sound better than "disgusting".
higher protein content
Maybe the buffalo is a 'male trans birthing animal'...
@@topherthe11th23 Well, you can have apple wine or fruit wine. Drink created by the same process but from different fruit or mixture of fruits.
I was playing a game once where you had to pick only specific cards in a grid. You played with a team member and one of you knew which were safe and which were not. They had to give you one word clues based on the images on the cards.
You played against another team and the first team to select all the right cards won. So a single clue that applied to multiple CORRECT cards was key to winning.
My buddy have me the clue etymology and was really proud of it. I had no clue how the history of words had any relevance to any of the images. In fact I felt stupid after not getting anything from it.
I found out later that he was thinking of entomology which indeed made a lot more sense.
That's Codenames. It's a really fun game, and can be quite challenging. 5x5 grid of cards. ( I couldn't think of the game's name, but was able to find it with an internet search)
I was just thinking that people who confuse etymology and entomology bug me in ways I can't put into words.
Did you want to be number one?
You just had to say it
Does it bug you?
Good one!
Thanks dad.
Occasionally the Internet does something worthwhile. This podcast is one of those moments.
Rob's comments about earlier words for bear being linked to honey are interesting. Bear in Czech is medvěd (pronounced med-vied), inherited directly from proto-Slavic. "Med" is literally honey and "věd" is science or more generally knowledge or "know" (vědět), so medvěd is literally the one who knows where the honey is. Perhaps this wasn't restricted to just Slavic languages in the past.
The similar Russian name Medvédev also means bear ... which means a Russian Bear was the President of Russia ...
The German for mead is "Met".
I think "ved" is not "to know" or rather "to lead to" in this case, so medved is the one leading you to honey
@@paulcally739 "Medved" is a Jewish name one sometimes encounters in America en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Medved .
@@davidioanhedges Medved is Russian for a bear. The ending -ev/-ova/-ovo is used to show belonging, so Medvedev would mean "he that belongs to the bear", or in other case "son of a bear"
European explorers of Madagascar did not dub them "lemurs" because of their cute faces. They did so because the animals make scary cries in the night (to communicate with each other) that sounded to Europeans like ghosts.
the worst part of this show is that it ends
Thanks for watching!
Absolutely!
❤❤❤❤
I bet you $5 it'll start up again soon in a few days.
The calamari is complementary. No squid pro quo.
Love it! :) :) :)
Even gorillas hum to themselves and do a little wiggle when they eat something that makes them happy.
Gorillas are liars too. When Koko was asked by the anthropologist who taught her sign language (I forget her name now) what happened to the sink which was ripped from the wall, Koko said her kitten did it!
The lie was really important though. It shows gorillas have individuation and realise that other people (or gorillas) don't know what they know.
That's adorable.
There's a youtube channel that has filmed their raven (Fable the Raven) teaching itself to hum songs
@@QTGetomov "Just kitten, human"
How about some Welsh insect names:
Woodlouse = Moch bach y coed (little wood pigs)
Ladybird/Ladybug=Bywch goch gota (spotty red cow)
And my personal fave is a term for a:
Butterfly = Iâr fach yr haf (Little chicken of the summer)
Keep up the excellent work!
Little red cow! I love it.
Rob getting squeamish at ticks rather than booby hills is an unexpected development.
The Grand Tetons has the same meaning as booby hills.
@@mikeyhau The Paps of Jura (a pair of rounded hills on the Scottish island of Jura) also has the same meaning.
He's working on it!
@@mikeyhauThe human imagination is sooo predictable.
@@Brunoburningbright’Wow, your boobs remind me of a nearby pair of well rounded hills’ said no guy, ever.
Another animal word is 'porcelain' which literally means 'little pig'. When Europeans first saw porcelain they were amazed at how smooth and shiny it was. They named it after the Latin word for a large seashell that cameos were carved from, since the interior had a similar extremely smooth and shiny surface. The opening of the seashell, in turn was called 'little pig' because it reminded the Romans of a certain part of female anatomy which in both Latin and Greek was colloquially called 'little pig'.
Oh, this is wonderful! Thank you.
Stop! You'll make Rob blush! 😀
You missed an opportunity to talk about the Aboriginal Australian language that also called a dog a "dog".
Now THAT is interesting!
In german language name of german breed ,Great Dane' is called , Deutsche Dogge '. When i was young, every large mastiffstyle dog was called Dogge. Usual word is Hund, you call some dogs hound.
@@brittakriep2938 They were other breeds like Englische Docken, Englische Tocken or Englischer Hund. But Docken and therefor Dogge came from the english word dog. so dog came first
@@user-me4hg6ee4x : I also assumed that when first Mastiffs came to HRE , the word dog was misinterpretet as breed name.
Hi guys! At my grandfather's house in Louisiana the surrounding piney woods were full of ticks. When any of us kids would come in from playing, the first thing my mom would do is make us strip off our clothes and get inspected for ticks. One way to remove them without leaving the mouth parts of the tick imbedded in the skin was to take a match, light it, let it burn for a few seconds, blow it out, then immediately touch it to the tick's abdomen. This caused them to retract the soda straw-like mouth parts. Then you could remove the tick easily.
When I was a kid and we came in from the woods or the fields, we'd usually check our heads for ticks. If we found one, we used a cotton ball soaked in rubbing alcohol to remove it safely. Those were dog ticks, which were relatively easy to spot; the ones we worry about today are the tiny deer ticks which carry Lyme disease.
Wow! Thankyou for this tip! In Germany we have to be very careful about ticks! We carry a tick removing card. It us made of plastic, looks like a credit card and has a special slit in it to pass between the tick and the skin. Then lever the tick out and pull the mandibles out.
Methods involving application of heat or any substance (alcohol, butter etc.) are generally advised against nowadays, since it can cause the tick to regurgitate its stomach contents, thus increasing the chances of transaferring pathogens to the host. Applying alcohol to the skin *after* removal of the tick might be a good idea to disinfect the skin surface (although would probably have no effect on whatever pathogenic material might be deposited under the skin).
orangutan = orang hutan = "person of the forest". No suggestion of the person being either male or female, young or old. Bahasa has no gender, like Hungarian, Turkish, ...
'Man' and its cognates (in Germanic languages) was originally genderless, meaning 'human', with additions (e.g. 'wif-', leof-' to indicate gender). This inclusive meaning lingered in English, but has become confused and overlooked with the parallel rise and domination of the masculine-only meaning.
You were good until you used the word "bahasa," which simply means "language" (any language) in Malay and Indonesian. For example, in Malay, English is Bahasa Inggeris and an English person is "orang Inggeris", whereas Malay is Bahasa Melayu and a Malay is orang Melayu. By the way, although utan is a way to pronounce hutan (jungle) in Malay, just as 'ot is a way to pronounce hot in English, Malays carefully distinguish between Orang Hutan, who are actually human beings who live in the jungle, and orangutan, the ape. Also, about gender in Malay: absolutely right that there isn't any gender built into nouns. The way to distinguish a male animal from a female animal is to use "jantan" for male and "betina" for female.
If Turkish and Hungarian have no gender…
How do they reproduce? 😜
Dandelion - my grandmother used to call them "pittly-beds", because drinking dandelion tea would make you "pittle" (or urinate) the bed.
We're from north eastern England for context.
The common French name for it is 'Pissenlit' ("pee in bed") - even though our word 'Dandelion' is borrowed from French. Apparently 'Dent-de-lion' is also used as a more polite alternative.
The German for "Placenta" may translate as "womb cake", but the word "Placenta" actually does mean "cake". Placenta cake was a dessert in ancient times, and we adopted it many years later.
In Austria, the pancake is called "Palatschinke", which also comes from "Placenta"
Max Miller of Tasting History made an ancient Roman cheesecake called a placenta.
@@agnesmilewski Sounds like it would come from Palačinke, a Balkan crepe.
@@anglendIt does and that word is related to placenta.
Yes i came acrross this in some recipe once and was like ooh gross! Then realised it was just cake phew!
Talking about animal words, Singapore, is possibly the of the few countries named after an animal. Singa is Malay for lion, pura is Sanskit for city.
England is named after those brutish people the Angles which were humanish and humans are animals.....
However, Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, means 'cat' in Malay; but the town is actually named for a hill (Bukit mata kuching) which was a hill (Bukit) where a fruit known as 'cat eyes' - 'mata kuching' grew
To me, the most interesting thing about the 'moose'/'elk' story is how little time it took before the British English speakers were convinced that 'moose' was the correct English word for the animal. The word 'moose' of course doesn't show up in English until English speakers encounter the same animal in North America. At that point, most English people have never seen a real live European elk (moose) since they were already extinct on their home islands, so the first large horned animal they come across in North America they call 'elk' - probably because it reminds them of descriptions of European elks and think this animal must be something similar, rather than actually thinking this new animal is the same thing. Meeting with the animal that actually is the same as a European elk, they instead adopt a form of a native American word for it. But here's the part that interests me most: Educated Brits in the UK realise from the start that this is a confusing naming practice and put up a brave fight to make people say 'elk' about at least the European elk instead of moose. And they almost succeed. If you look at dictionaries of BRITISH English, until at least the 1950s (and my guess is, even later), they recommend this way of using the word. Many older Brits I've spoken to have agreed that this is the correct usage, and confirmed to me that at least when they talk about the animal here in Europe they use the word 'elk'. However, get anyone under the age of seventy in Britain and they will say 'moose'. In just a generation or so, they have completely forgotten that the animal was ever called 'elk' and if I bring it up they often try to correct me saying I have it mixed up with the North American elks that are not the same animal.
This...been there, done that...
Wait so you're saying calling them elk is like calling them indian?
@@donwald3436 I doubt very much that the elk/moose you meet in the woods will object to whatever you call it - so, no! It's not like calling them indian. 😄 But it's fun to follow the development - first we had one English word for the animal. Then we had two, one each side of the Atlantic. Then the newer word was imported to the old word's territory and caused academic confusion, so people thought: 'We need to fix this in dictionaries!' and for a while it looks like they are going to win. Then, in just a generation, the newer word takes the lead and almost completely crushes the old one.
The word "moose" comes from the Algonquian word moosu
Oh I am so confused now 😮
My favorite t shirt has a mantis religiosa on it with the words “prey, love, eat” below.
Some advice for Jess. The 'qu' in French is not pronounced like the 'qu' in English. In English we pronounce it 'kw', but in French is is pronounced 'k', or 'c'.
Quoi?
@@EdwinHofstra An exception, I think?
Totally unnecessary, but I think Im in love with Jess and absolutely adore Rob, and thank them both for this delightful show
My understanding is that the Norwegian word for bat, “flaggermus” derives from “flappy mouse”, which I love and think we should adopt in English
The same is mostly true in German, where it is "Fledermaus". "Fleder-" on its own doesn't mean anything in modern German (maybe it did several centuries ago, dunno...), but just from the sounds if it it evokes very strong "flight-related" associations as there is "fliegen" (to fly), "Flügel" (wing), Feder (feather).
Interestingly also English native speakers seem to perceive a bat as being something like a mouse with wings, since there are several cartoons that are a "play" on that.
@@Galenus1234"Fleder" might be related to "Flatter(n)".
English does have an old similar word for bat: "flittermouse". I love it, and you should use it! 🙂
@@royjohansen3730 Love it!
When I was younger, I thought they're called "Ledermaus" (leather mouse) with an added F at the front to indicate the flapping 😄
The thing that distinguishes Humans is that we're the only animal that obsesses over what separates them from the other animals.
Because everything says that we ARE animals - but we don't want to be.
I generally say in reply that we are not vegetables or minerals so must be animals. Hover, I have heard some people use a 4th description. Human, animal vegetable or mineral!🤔
I studied a bit of Norwegian before a trip last summer. A phrase that I recall (but might misspell) is “Bjørnen spiser elgen,” “The bear is eating the moose.” So Norwegian is one of the languages in which a form of “elk” is used to mean “moose.” I never got to use the phrase at all. Even though I took a train across the mountains, I never saw a bear or a moose, much less see the former eating the latter.
It's correctly written. :-)
@@mariiris1403 Thanks.
@@steve-4045 I've never used that phrase, either. 😂 I've seen mooses, but not bears.
Another phrase: "Elgen spiser epler i hagen hver høst." ="The moose eats apples in the garden every autumn."
Side note: "Elg" or "elgen" is often used as collective singular. Could be one, could be several.
Regarding saying “psst psst” to cats, I’ve always assumed it gets their attention because it sounds like a squeaking mouse or small bird chirping.
You clearly have never heard a mouse or a bird if you really believe they sound anything like psst psst 😅
From a biological standpoint this actually makes sense, simply because cat ears are attuned to very high pitched sounds (which their prey make). Now we could narrow our vocal cords and go 'peep peep' to get their attention, but a psst does the trick. They simply listen out for this frequency more than deeper ones.
Whatever. It works. It makes their ears twitch.
@@BrunoburningbrightI don't think there's any sound that doesn't make a cat's ears twitch
I wonder if there's an etymological thread similar to calling pigs with "sooey" or cows with "come boss" (though those both connect to the Latinate names, though I guess su is equally Germanic)--and I see some online etymologies that posit that puss was derived from the call.
In Dutch a female cat is called a 'poes' and the male is a 'kater'. They are both also called 'kat', which is the neutral form.
Regardless of the etymology, I was taught that the Dutch 'luipaard' (leopard) doesn't mean 'lui paard' (lazy horse) but 'luip aard', sneaky character.
Dandelion tea is delicious and definitely useful as a diuretic, so not to be drunk after a certain time in the day for exactly that reason!
Nowadays Salukis have their own horses and they work together with a hawk. They ride to the hunting ground, because otherwise they're tired out if they have to run there. The moment the hawk takes off to find prey in the desert the Saluki keeps its eyes on the bird and takes off once the bird starts to circle in the air to show where the prey is. They still hunt this way in the Middle East!
InGerman it is "Katze" (female) and "Kater" (male)
Dandelion in modern French is pissenlit, literally "piss in bed", "pisses in bed".
pissenlit?
@@Wee_Langside It helps if you split it up: "piss en lit" (pronounced something like "peace on lee")
Thought it was dent de lion, lion's tooth.
@@AdDewaard-hu3xk They're both correct. Piss-en-lit is more of a popular/slang name, and quite widely used.
@@ftumschk In french, we only use "pissenlit", not at all "dent de lion". Thank you for the french etymology and the attempt of english-based phonetics, although the nasal french "en" sound is impossible to translate with an english sound. Diolch 🙂
44:26 Pronunciation tip: The German "Dachs" (badger) just sounds like "dux" /daks/; the "-chs" is the German way of writing the "x" sound (cf. "Fuchs" (fox), "Lachs" (salmon, lax), "sechs" (six)). The dachshund is commonly called "Dackel" in German; "Dachshund" has become rare.
On the subject of hidden cows, the legal term "chattel", meaning moveable property, comes from the same root as "cattle", both ultimately deriving from the Latin "caput", meaning "head". And of course in English we might talk about, say, "forty head of cattle", which is a bit etymologically redundant.
Speaking of cows, I heard that "daughter" derives from "the one that milks the cows."
Another hidden cow is "boulimia" meaning "hungry as a cow/ox" in Greek (the word "bous" in Greek refers to both genders)...
Pig may actually have come from the word for red clay in England, pygg.
The term pygg bank pre-existed the pig shape, for example, because they were terra cotta made from pygg.
It is possible that pigs got their name from often being red from being covered with pygg, in their pens.
The difference between a buffalo and a bison is that you can't wash your hands in a buffalo.
Well, I suppose you could _try..._
The difference between a cormorant and a shag is that no-one ever remembers their very first cormorant.
I feel like there's some basin connection here, but basin and bison don't rhyme in my accent. Are they homophones in some accent?
@@dumpster_fiyah Basin and Bison are thought to rhyme in ‘Strine.
What's the difference between a Chickpea and a Lima Bean?... I've never had a Lima bean on my face. :D Anyway, hum us a tune will ya?
Are you sure about Schnauzer? The verb "schnauzen" comes from "Schnauze" (snout). "Schnauzer" is also the short version of "Schnauzbart" (moustache; literally snout beard). The snout of this dog indeed looks quite special, it protects them from vermin. For that they don’t need specific barking characteristics in contrast to hunting dogs who needed to bark while hunting due to being quickly out of sight in forests etc. They were bred as a vermin killer, so it makes more sense to name them after their snout than after their barking.
This brought back an old, forgotten memory. When I was a kid in the 60s I was told that smelling dandelions would make you wet the bed.
This channel is so much fun. It's always a dilemma whether to watch it as soon as the video posts or wait until the end of the day when I can relax and take it all in.
In Sweden, the moose is called an älg, which I suspect is a derivative of elk, but if you look at an älg, it is clearly a moose.
Correct! The funny thing is that "elk" actually refers to moose first, and what we call "elk" in the USA aren't actually elk at all, but rather just a type of large deer. And the word "deer" in English also comes from the same root word as "animal" in Nordic languages "djur", "dier", etc
@@ShadowDrakkento make things more confusing is that a subspecies of the American elk lives in Siberia and is called Wapiti, which is derived from a Native American name, despite there already being a Mongolian name for the animal, maral. The Russians call the Asian subspecies maral, but call the American one wapiti.
@@ShadowDrakken Well in older Nordic dyr was by hunters referring to deer specifically. It only later became the word for animals, and the prefix Dyre- is still preserved in Danish and some swedish dialects as the meat of deer, in for instance Dyrekølle.
I'm not a zoologist, but if I understand the difference correctly, when you show the pictures of the moose and the elk, that elk is what a North American elk looks like, while a European elk which you find mostly in Scandinavia is actually a moose, especially visible looking at the antlers. The German word for both North American moose and European elk is "Elch".
I recently discovered that some sources say that the word "penguin" is based on the Welsh "pen-gwyn" literally "white head" - the Welsh name given to the great auk.
One explanation I've heard for why America Bison are called Buffalo is that when they were being slaughtered by the millions, many of their hides were shipped to Buffalo NY. Where they were made into coats commonly called Buffalo Coats because that's where they were made. The name of the garments morphed into the name for the animals. So the animals were called after the city, not vice versa.
I'm pretty sure that's an invented folk etymology, because Buffalo, New York was named for Buffalo Creek, which was first recorded as the name of that particular watercourse in 1764, and the creek itself was most likely named for bison.
I love you two, I could listen to you both all day you bounce off each other so well. 😊
It's interesting about the original word for bear being lost and replaced with a word meaning brown thing. In the Irish language, the names of many dangerous/sacred animals stopped being used and alternatives took their place. Like the original word for wolf being replaced by "mac tíre" meaning son of the land; or the original word for spider being replaced with "damhán alla" meaning fierce little stag or ox. There are many other totem animals whose names have been replaced in Irish as well.
1. My favourite garden path sentence: "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana."
2. The Dutch word for leopard is "luipaard", which obviously has the same etymology, only the literal meaning is, confusingly, "lazy horse". Which makes no sense at all.
3. We have the word "pissebed" in Dutch, but here it's a woodlouse instead of a dandelion. Not really sure why.
"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana." That is a joke by Groucho Marx.
"Kameelperd" is Afrikaans for giraffe. The second part sounds like it means "horse", but it's actually the "pard" of "leopard".
The Flemish dialect word for dandelion is pissebloem, bloem meaning flower and piss... well... you got that one....
The "lazy horse" for "leopard" was used in a comedy sketch "Wat als Van Dale een echte klootzak was" (˜ "What if Webster was an absolute asshole"), in which an adventurer says "Sir, I found a fast feline" and the dictionary creator replies "Fast feline? Hm. We shall call it... lazy horse!"
@@zetectic7968 and most germans can't translate it correctly to German and Deepl/Google can't also(!) and it took me a long time to get it ;-)
Fun fact: we are slowly but surely learning that language is not unique to humans. I'm not talking about just body language, which is inherent to most animals, but verbal language that includes dialects, names, and enough structur to be judged as being taught instead of instinctual vocalizations. Personally I find it quite beautiful how the boarders we set to distinguish the human species from animals become blurrier and blurrier.
Rob mentioning Manchester made me recall the Grand Tetons National Park in Wyoming.
Also the Paps of Jura (Scottish island)
The seaside town of The Mumbles in South Wales was so named because the hills looked like breasts when viewed from the sea.
Many years ago my daily drive into work on a military installation in the western U.S. passed a small, marvelously symmetrical, stand-alone mountain that was called Squaw’s Tit. The idealized ideation that underlay the name was readily grasped. The frank Anglo-Saxon name of the feature has no doubt been altered in recent decades. It must be wondered if a similar nomenclatural fate is in store for Western Wyoming’s more craggy, higher, and more well-known peaks.
In southern Colorado the "Spanish Peaks" are a pair of mountains that natives called "breasts of the Earth."
The name Manchester has always baffled me. Why isn't it Womanchester?
What distinguishes humans from other animals is the amount of information we can pass from one generation to the next. This is largely thanks to the complexity of our spoken and written languages.
As someone who actually studied this in depth in college for a long time, the only (and I do mean only) thing which seperates HomoSapiens from the rest of the animal kingdom is simply our ability to ask the question "What makes us different?" (and not the physical act of asking it, but rather the formulation of the philosophical process which leads to the distinction in the firat place).
super-cogito, ergo superfluus sum
Methinks we doth protest too much.
But not all humans are capable of formulating this philosophical process. This doesn’t make them less than human.
Why indeed should there be something that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom? We already have our biological separation. Isn’t this sufficient?
The family "Homo Sapiens" is just one type of Homonid, so it not only separates us from the animal kingdom, it also separates us from the other homonids (although based on recent discoveries, this may not be true).
I don't think you studied anywhere near enough 🤡
That's one of the things I love about other languages, with stricter rules. It's brings comfort to know what's correct, what's not, and that there's no way to misunderstand a statement if it's written following all rules.
In English we use dog for one animal and dogs for more than one animal. In Polish, there are three forms depending on the number of dogs: one, (two through four), and five or more. Having separate spellings of the noun based on the number of animals implies dogs were important in Polish culture.
This is not specific to dogs. Most Slavic languages do this to all count nouns.
Speaking of different words for "dog", I've always been fascinated that the Polish word is "pies" (pronounced in one syllable as "pyess") but the word in Russian - which you'd think would be similar - is "sobaka" (собака) - not to be confused with "ciupaga" (pronounced "tsewPAHgah") which is a Polish mountaineer's axe-headed walking stick. I'm not fluent enough in these languages to research the etymology.
@@ChasFink Собака is from an Iranian word related to σπακα, the only attested Median word (other Median words are reconstructed from being borrowed into Persian and other languages). There is пёс, but it's not as common.
@@pierreabbat6157 How did an Iranian term become a loan word in Russian?
@@paulohagan3309 I don't know. Ossetia is on the border between Georgia and Russia, but the Ossetian word is completely different: куыдз. Собака is attested in Old East Slavic.
Several years back I saw a headline from somewhere in Scandinavia about an elk and was very confused, and then looked at the article and it was a moose. The explanation I found online is that elk was originally used to refer to that animal, but when settlers in America who had never seen one before saw a different huge deer, they started calling it by that name
Does "moggy" belong with "dog", "hog" and "frog"? This channel is the bee's knees; love it.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "moggy" is a rather recent word, first cited in the early 1900s. The OED gives no firm etymology, but suggests it might derive from "Maggie". Apart from being a diminutive of Margaret, a "maggie" was once a Scottish slang term for a young girl, regardless of her name.
@@ftumschk Thank you. I could/should have looked myself, sorry.
@@artgold8593 Thanks for whetting my curiosity!
Interesting question. I started looking at wiktionary (OK, I know it’s not the greatest authority) and it connected the word hog to hewing, or cutting chunks. Which is still used in the sense of roughing out stuff, come to think of it. “Hog out the mortices with a drill first, then chisel the sides.” To hog out metalwork means make it all from a blank by cutting, machining, rather than moulds or hammer work.
@@ftumschk in Nottinghamshire coal miners where often called Pit Moggies....
Hippopottamus in Danish is "river horse", "moose" is "elg" which is pronounced softer than "elk".
This is such a fascinating video 👍👍👍
And of course a 'hippodrome' was where horse-racing took place, and 'Mesopotamia' was the land between rivers.
Orang utan, from Orang Hutan is just man of the forest, or more specifically 'forest people'. Pagolin is from pengguling; guling means to roll up (e.g. a mat), pe- (morphed to peng- in front of words that starts with g) is the prefix that is similar to the english suffix -er, so penggulling can be translated roll upper, or roller upper.
Germans pronounce it "Oh-rong UH-tang"; my wife finds the way Americans rapidly say "Uh-rang-uh-tang" as one word hilarious.
10:41 when you mentioned that shark has germanic roots that mean something like villain, i right away had to think about the german "Schurke" - which means exactly that
Dutch 'schurk' as well. Now I'm going to imagine a shark every time someone says the word schurk!
Some younger Germans have started using the Americal English "hi!" as a greeting. My German father-in-law always complains about ever-increasing "Denglish", and when he'd hear my kids using it, he'd grumpily ask "so where's the shark?" as the German for shark is "Hai".
The German word for placenta (Mutterkuchen < Mutter 'mother' + Kuchen 'cake') might be related to the word placenta from Latin. In Latin, placenta actually meant a flat type of cake, with the English word placenta being a figurative description of the placenta. So German may have calque-translated the Latin word and then added on mother to make it more specific to motherhood and pregnancy.
It probably wasn't an addition in German, exactly, but rather "placenta uterina" being the Latin medical term when it was originally calqued, with the qualifier subsequently dropped in other languages.
Its just the word for cake. Placenta is a cake not often used now but it is still a word for cake. Mother cake isnt even related to placenta its just mother and cake. Placenta is just saying something in a way that is demure ..oh your birthing pancake has plopped on the floor madam. Or i see your gee muffin is slipping out there maam! 😂
@@indef2defabsolutely. We have old 2800s medicall books and thats exactly what it says! It has little pictures you can lift up the flaps i adore it like a pop up book.
Placenta is a layin medical term for the English word 'afterbirth'; it seems to me that in the last century or so we have been replacing English words that might have been considered slightly rude, or not used in polite conversation with latin medicalised equivalents. Other examples would include: uterus, vagina, penis
If you asked me to name the dog that meant "Lion Dog" then a shih-tzu would literally be the last dog on the list. I could list every other possible breed. Shih-tzu would be the last one. I can't think of a less lion-like dog.
But then again, my mom's old shih-tzu thought he was pitbull and he would have eaten you if he could have. He was literally dangerous to small animals and children. He loved the hell out of me, though. I was the only person besides my parents who could be around him without walking away with shredded ankles.
I really love the series, I do. I like the hosts, the way Jes tilts her head in amazement like a puppy and Rob’s full frontal nerdity.
There’s just one thing: Jes’s vocal fry; the croaky, champagne cork about to pop sound she makes at the end of sentences. I can’t help myself imitating it.
"Full Frontal Nerdity" now that's a T-shirt.
There's always at least one comment on my voice, and all I can say is that I'm content with the way I speak and don't plan to change it. Appreciate your kind words on the show, and thank you for listening! "Full frontal nerdity" is fabulous. :) - Jess
@@WordsUnravelled Jess, there is no problem with your voice. The point is that the vocal fry of USA voices indeed sounds so strange for european ears... As this podcast is based on the comparison between UK and US english, your typical vocal fry is thus fully part of it, as well as the perfect stylish UK accent of Rob. That's you and that's all! And we love it!
@@Anne-Enez Thank you, Anne! ❤
@@pressbIt's brilliant. It's adorable and it's no doubt intended with love.
Jess & Rob, you always tickle my fancy when you delve into our wonderful world of WORDS. You are a delight!❤
You two have become one of my top five favorite podcasts in the last couple of weeks.
Don’t forget the arachnids are related to Arachne, who was the weaver with the nerve to challenge the goddess. She won, but was turned into a spider for her hubris.
I was reading a diary written by the French explorer Samuel de Champlain. Champlain was one of the earliest explorers of Canada and a kind of "founding father" of French Canada. In his diary, he refers to a river in which he found "many hippopotami." Champlain was a very down-to-earth man, not given to flights of fancy, and usually very accurate in his descriptions. But I figured it out. Champlain had a classical education, and would have been familiar with the Greek word "hippopotamus." Of course, he would have never seen one, but read descriptions of a large animal, comparable to a horse, that spent a lot of its time in rivers. He was talking about Moose!
Btw, in Canada, we more often use the word "wapiti" instead of "elk," It comes from Cree, the most widely spoken First Nations language in Canada. It is also the name used without exception in Canadian French.
Keep in mind that a "panther" isn't really one specific thing. It's a term applied to the melanistic (dark-colored or "black") variant of both the jaguar and the leopard. It has come to more commonly refer to a melanistic jaguar, however, because they thrive better than melanistic leopards and are therefore more common (though still quite rare). You're just more likely to be successful being a black animal trying to camouflage in heavy jungles and dense rainforests as a South American jaguar than you are being a black animal trying to camouflage in dry grass as an African leopard.
So close but wrong.
It's my understanding that Panther (genus Panthera) is a group that includes Lion, Tiger, Jaguar, Leopard, Cougar/Mountain Lion/Puma, Snow Leopard - regardless of colouration
A panther is not necessarily a black panther.
That is not and has never been the meaning of the word "panther".
And it is not associated more with jaguars than any other big cat.
As some have pointed out, there is the scientific genus Panthera, which includes a variety of large cat species. They're correct in that.
Those who say you're wrong, however, are incorrect. If they check a variety of dictionaries, such as the Cambridge, Oxford, and others, they'll find several definitions of the word, and that your usage is correct and usually the first definition given. That is, a panther is a leopard, usually a black one. Some will add that there's also a specific North American usage, where panther also refers to a puma/cougar.
So there is definitely a scientific genus term, but in everyday usage there are several possibilities, but the most common is usually black leopard.
Do a Google image search on "panther" and 99% of what you get is pictures of black jaguars. That is the *common* usage.
As a kid growing up in rural West of Ireland we called dandelions ''pissybeds'' (when Mammy was not listening) and we blew the 'clocks' seedheads to tell the time of day. We also knew that if you hid a dandelion in someone's bed they would wet the bed during the night. We believed the milk-white sap which comes from the stem was a treatment for warts. So it is interesting to hear that dandelions are also known as Cankerwort as 'canker' can refer to a fungating or verrucous (wart-like) skin tumour or a similar growth on plants.
A card sharp is a person who uses skill and/or deception to win at card games. However, many say "card shark". And yet, the latter meaning seems to be the original one, according to this video.
Great, as usual. The "sss" sound associated with cats may be because it's a sound they respond to because of the high overtones. Here in Jamaica, they're always called "puss". If you say puss repeatedly, "puss puss puss puss puss", any cat around will immediately look at you.
Related to shark originally meaning villain, German still has the word "Schurke" which is unrelated to fish.
And of course we still have card shark in English, which I guess would be a fossil word.
The contemporary German word "Schurke" should be the descendant of the ancestor that gave "shark" its name. But now here is the fun thing: The contemporary German word for "shark", "Hai" can also be used to describe a ruthless, scoundrelish person commonly in compound words as e.g. in "Miethai" (a cutthroat landlord).
See the similar usage of "loan shark" in English.
Some younger Germans have started using the Americal English "hi!" as a greeting. My German father-in-law always complains about ever-increasing "Denglish", and when he'd hear my kids using it, he'd grumpily ask "so where's the shark?" as the German for shark is "Hai".
I'm old enough to remember (when the movie Jaws came out), that there was an SNL paradoy about a "land shark" th-cam.com/video/p_NS2H55dxI/w-d-xo.htmlsi=0Ol7Kshtd56BXwL4 .
@@GunnarMiller I remember the land shark, too!
Schrödinger's elk: it is and is not a moose! Interesting, how the way we see animals is dependent on the language we use. In Finnish, elk is "Canadian moose" (kanadanhirvi), red deer is "German moose" (saksanhirvi) and the deer family is "moose animals" (hirvieläimet), a moose (hirvi) being the primary reference point, also associated with the words for monster (hirviö) and terrible (hirveä). Also, Finnish for roe deer is "forest capricorn" (metsäkauris), while the Swedish equivalent (rådyr) literaly means "raw animal".
I am confused by the 'capricorn' in your translation of 'metsäkauris.' Almost exclusively, "Capricorn" is used in English as a capitalized proper noun referring to the astrological birth sign, and the people born under it. The uncapitalized Latinate common noun 'capricorn' meaning 'goat or goat-like horned animal' does exist, but is exceedingly rare in use. So is a 'metsäkauris' a 'forest person born under the astrological sign of the sea goat,' or a 'forest goat-like horned animal?' And if it is indeed the case that the Finnish word for roe deer references the zodiac, how did that come to be? Does the end of their typical gestation period coincide with the astrological sign's ascendance?
Instead of capricorn, do you perhaps mean unicorn?
@@virginiabarnsley1658 I thought of that, but when I input the Finnish 'kauris' into Google Translate, it does indeed return the word "Capricorn," in the astrological sense, as the primary translation, as well as the word "goat" as a secondary translation, which is exactly the ambiguity that had me wondering to begin with.
@@bartolomeothesatyr OK, the zodiac sign capricorn is kauris in Finnish, but the Finnish kauris as an animal is deer.
@@topilinkala1594 Thanks!
Fun genetic biology fact: if we were to consider every animal that we commonly identify “fish” as the genetic boundaries of the animal group “fish”(which is to say, a living group defined by their earliest common ancestor), than it would at a minimum contain all vertebrates. This is considering that most common colloquial definition of fish to be all vertebrates with gills and fins, i.e. bony fish and cartilaginous fish, who share their common ancestor with all other other vertebrates. This is also the most limited genetic boundary for a commonly identified group of “fish” every other one would only be larger and include more animals. For example, including all aquatic crustaceans and mollusks (shellfish, loosely), would result in a group sharing an earliest common ancestor with all bilateria (animals with developmental bilateral body plan symmetry) and expanding the group to include every animal which we use the word “fish” as part of its common english name (I.e jellyfish, starfish) the group likely included all animals, period.
Furthermore: there was a man who couldn't decide about the plural of mongoose - so he wrote to the local pet-shop saying that he wanted to buy a mongoose, then added a postscript that he wanted a second one.
Sounds like the Russian skit about five fireplace pokers. 1 кочерга, 2,3,4 кочерги, 5 ???
The "psss" sound you use to attract the attention of cats works precisly BECAUSE it sounds like the cat's warning sound to other cats. The all turn their heads towards you when they hear it.
I suspect the word 'dog' is onomatopoeic, the sound of the animal's bark. Then there's the word for dog in the Aboriginal language Mbabaram: it's 'dog'.
I was going to make a comment bringing this up until I saw this one. I will add that Rob said that all instances of "dog" in other languages come from English. In this case that is wrong. The Mbabaram word is not related to English at all. Mbabaram as a language has spent the last few thousand years isolated in Australia with no historical contact with other language (besides the one other aboriginee language and English much much later on obviously). The fact that English and Mbabaram share the exact same word for the exact same thing is most likely a complete coincidence. That's one of those useless fun facts that I love to bring up when the opportunity arises.
That is the sort of trenchant observation that suddenly switches light bulbs on. Dog might very well be an instance of a single syllable onomatopoeic representation of canine vocalization.
In German, a "Dogge" (pronounced DOG-GUH) is a specific dog breed of large mastiff sighthounds originating in Medieval Germany for hunting bears, wild boars, and deer. For some reason, this dog breed is called Great Dane in English despite there being no connection to Denmark. To distinguish these from another smaller mastiff breed called "Englische (Bull)Dogge" (lit. "English (bull)dog"), they are more specifically called "Deutsche Dogge" (lit. "German dog") in German-speaking lands.
@@jonrolfson1686 "trenchant" well, if we were playing scrabble you'd have 8 points right there. Seriously, though it's very rare that I have to Google a word so good job lol. "Vigorous or incisive" or in other words "sharp". I'm going to have to use that one at some point in the future
@@berlindude75 out of curiosity, I did some research on why we call it a Great Dane. Apparently it's translated from the French "le Grande Danois". The story goes that a French naturalist visiting Denmark saw one there and named it that and that name just stuck. We borrowed it from French.
The pronunciation of haai in Dutch was actually spot on 🙂
In Swedish it's haj (pronounced like the English hi, mostly)... I heard someone call the IKEA shark "blah-hajj" and I died a little inside.
@14:14 Rob does a hard "Nope!" on ticks. 😂
Totally agree.
Chiggers are a kind of mite that can bury under your skin and make you itch for days.
The dog, pig, hog question raises the question of whether this is a Pict ending that has survived. We have so few words from that language that, as far as I know, we don't know its language group fully. It may even be from the pre Celtic ice age cultures of the region. The genetics implies ice age and definitely pre Celt.
You have it backwards, a placenta is first a flat cake, it is secondarily and by comparison, the connection between baby and womb, because after delivery it resembles a placenta in shape. The English alternative is afterbirth.
Jess - I think you are teaching Rob not to blush! He got through mammal without even the slightest flush 😊
I found out yesterday that scampi the cooking style literally means lobster.
So shrimp scampi means shrimp lobster.
When I was a kid we thought touching dandelions would make you pee the bed. Never understood where that rumour came from
Regarding "dog":
The etymology of Old English *docga revisited
"Its origin remains one of the great mysteries of English etymology" according to Etymonline.
"In fact, historians of English seem to have lost interest in the word, at best commenting on its form [...]. Since no etymological source suggests itself, dog has apparently been shelved together with other words of dubious derivation" [3].
In 2006, Gąsiorowski "challenge[d] this agnostic attitude" [3]. I think he successfully found the correct Proto-Indo-European etymological root of dog along with its cognates in other languages. Proto-Indo-European *dheu-4 indeed meant several dull colors like "brown, grey, dun", and a parallel evolution from "brownish-grey, dun" to "mongrel, cur" as the informal name for a dog can be found in Polish burek "dog, mutt, a farmyard watchdog" as he noticed. However, a more obvious etymology for dog from that same root can be found.
From Middle English dog, dogge (after 1200), from Old English *docga ("dog", literally "little mutt, little mongrel") [1], from Old English dōc, dōcincel ("bastard", literally "mongrel, hybrid, mixed") [2], from Proto-Germanic *dūjan- ("to tremble") [4], from Proto-Indo-European *dheu-4, dheua- (IEW 261-267) "swirl (together), muddy, cloudy, unclean (water), stun, dizziness, vortex, darkening, bland, dull, to stir up, suffering from spinning sickness", hence "hybrid, mixed". Latin bigener "biracial", hence literally "hybrid, mongrel, mixed", is glossed as "doc" in the 10th century [2]. Hence the semantic evolution is from Proto-Indo-European "to swirl" to "mixed", to Old English "hybrid" to "mutt" as "bastard", to Middle English "mutt" as "dog" already completely fossilize i.e. without any hint of the meaning "hybrid". Old English dōc "bastard" died out around 1050 in the transition to Middle English as Middle English dog arose in use around 1200. The colors meant by Old English dox ("dark, dun, brownish-grey") need not have participated in the formation and evolution of the word dog, contrary to Gąsiorowski's hypothesis, as the word dog likely originated from the meaning "mongrel" already embodied by the Old English word dōc ("bastard").
References
[1] *docga is inferred from attested genitive plural docgena in a Prudentius' Psychomachia gloss to Latin canum from circa 1050. [3]
[2] David A. E. Pelteret. Anglo-Saxon History: Basic Readings. "Apart from hornung and the adjective cyfesboren, "born of a concubine", the only other recorded Old English word for a concubine's son is the rare and obscure noun dōc and its diminutive dōcincel. There are two recorded instances of dōc and one of dōcincel in Old English and all are found in glosses. Dōcincel glosses nothus [Latin for bastard, from the Greek nothos, meaning bastard, spurious] in British Library, Harley MS. 526, fo. 15v, a 10th century manuscript of Bede's Metrical Life of St. Cuthbert with contemporary glosses; another early-10th-century manuscript of the same work, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS. 183, glosses nothus in the same context as hornungbrothor. In both cases the allusion is to King Aldfrith of Northumbria, the son of Oswiu by an Irish concubine.
This same Aldfrith is described by the homilist Ælfric as cyfesborena brothor, "a brother born of a concubine". The remaining two glosses are from manuscripts of the late Anglo-Saxon period. One is in the 11th-century British Library, Cotton Cleopatra MS. A.iii, which glosses nothus as suthan wind, oththe dooc, hornungsunu, "south wind or bastard, illegitimate son" [in Ancient Greek, nothos meant bastard, and notos meant south wind, from Southern Pre-Greek]; the other is in a 10th-century glossary of difficult Latin words, British Library, Harley MS. 3376, which translates the Latin bigener, "produced from two different races, hybrid, mongrel", as aworden uel doc. The linking of dōc with aworden, past participle of aweorthan, "to cease to be, become insipid or worthless, decline" suggests that the word had pejorative associations and may speak for the decline in status of the offspring of a concubine in the late Anglo-Saxon period. Perhaps it is also significant that the Old English vocabulary of bastardy did not long survive the Norman Conquest, for neither dōc nor hornung appear in the Middle English Dictionary, and cyfes, "concubine", had a scarcely longer life. The Normans, of course, had their mistresses, but the specifically Anglo-Saxon traditions concerning concubines and their offspring may have fallen into decline after the Conquest and the vocabulary of concubinage died with the custom."
[3] Piotr Gąsiorowski. The etymology of Old English *docga. 2006. DOI 10.1515/IDGF.2006.015
[4] Guus Kroonen. Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic.
Source: Celtic Lexicon.
Please do one on Australian two syllable slang (and other elements of dialect) just to see what happens when Celts, Angles and a host of multi-cultural ethnicities are parked on an island and have to get along with being ... lucky. You guys are obviously happy and we love the fun you have with this stuff. Other suggestions: accents and pronunciation across the anglosphere; thesaurus synonyms and the subtle differences; the impact of writing medium on the message of words; would you like a french fried voice fry with that; Chinglish; Indian dialects of English - isn't it; words for colonizing other planets; words for renewable energy systems; politician word salad and deploying the passive voice to play us/them victim stuff; an expose of verbs in different modes eg subjunctive - exhortative - declaritive ... and anything that makes Rob go red :). You guys are beautiful - a joy to the heart - keep going and never stop.
"Dandelion" in German is "Löwenzahn", literally "lion's tooth".
Another 'animal' story.
In Québec we have the expression: "Parler anglais comme une vache espagnole" (speak English like a Spanish cow). And it means speak english poorly as a second language.
The original saying (in France) is: "Parler français comme un basque espagnol" (speak French like a Spanish-Basque). Presumably, the locals didn't know anything about the Basques region straddling the French and Spanish border.
cow words.....
❤
One of my late father's favorite dad jokes was to ask...
(needs an English accent)
Q. What's the difference between a buffalo and a bison?
A. You can't wash your hands in a buffalo.
{groan)
Q. What's the difference between an alligator and a crocodile?
A. An alligator will see you later, and a crocodile, after a while.
Ideally, a Black Country or Birmingham accent.
@@nickmiller76 Indeed. I was born in Walsall.
“Worm” was originally used not only for what we call a worm, but also for snakes and dragons. The monstrous creatures in Germanic (including Anglo-Saxon) legends and sagas that get called “dragon” in contemporary English translations are invariably called some etymological variant of “worm” in the original text.
Yes, and ... snakes & dragons were more often called "wyrms", rather than "worms". That said - there are instances of the the latter, eg: the Lambton Worm
@@CheeseWyrm Well, I was including “wyrm”, “orm” and any other of the various other spellings and dialectical cognates as essentially the same word.
@@fromchomleystreet Yes, I wasn't criticising - I was simply elaborating :)
So pebble worm is a good description of a crocodile
Frog in Dutch is kikker. Vos is fox. I'm an A1 Dutch speaker but I'm not aware of another commonly used word for frog.
Yes think he was confused. 😊
Do you know the history of the name of Dogger Bank? Heard it's named after a type of Dutch fishing boat.
No, he was not confused: he meant the word 'vors' (as in kikvors)
The German word for Great Dane is "Deutsche Dogge",
which backwashed from the Old English word "docga", which referred to a powerful breed of dog. The word "docga" is also the root of the modern English word "dog".
Riffing on that, the "Dogger Bank" was named after the doggers, medieval Dutch fishing boats especially used for catching cod.
It's a bit old-fashioned, but "frosch", German for frog, sounds a bit like "frosh" used to refer to high school/college freshman ... but it's unrelated.
@@JeeWeeD maybe he did. But it is not a word I have ever heard anyone in the Netherlands say.
Your delightful banter has made this my favourite YT channel. Your combination of plain "niceness" and wit and erudition really encapsulates the essence of what I, a Norwegian, think of as "hygge". 🙂
At 6:47 Jess says "English doesn't use Greek plurals". What about words like "stigma - stigmata" and other words ending in -ma?
Jess remains correct. Although originating in Greek, "stigma" entered into English via Latin, along with its Latin plural - "stigmata".
The issue with Fish as a category is that just including all the things that are "obviously proper fish" and excluding things like jellyfish, lobsters and other non-fish seafood - includes very distantly related species, and is a category that includes all of the subspecies of them also includes all land animals ...
Not sure I understood what you're trying to say... Also, this is not exclusive to English. For example, German for octopus is Tintenfisch (ink fish). Romance languages made an effort and didn't get lazy, so they use fish to refer to fish and fish-shaped animals only (as far as I know). Many fish, though, have unique names that don't include the word fish at all.
Hence the podcast!
Well, if you want to identify as a fish... I think that we (mammals) and other land-dwelling vertebrates (which I assume is what you mean by 'land animals') are far enough down the evolutionary path to be in zoological classes of their own of our own, and not classified as a kind of fish.
You mentioned the word "peculiar". There's a town in western Missouri named Peculiar, and the story is that when they decided to incorporate the town, they chose several other names first, but were told that those were already taken. They were told that the name should be "unique or peculiar", so that's what they chose.
We grew up calling dandelions "pissybeds" in Ireland in the 80s
same word in Dutch, "pissebedden"
Interesting thing though: in the German dialect my dad grew up speaking, dandelions are likewise called "bed-pissers", but in High German, they're called "Lion's tooth"...
@@RudieVissenberg Interestingly, the good Doctor Google translates that word as "woodlice"!
45 minutes for this episode? Not long enough. Glad I found this channel.