Etymology is the history of the origin of words and phrases.
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Etymology of “favourite” as a verb
The verb favourite or favorite (past tense favourited or favorited) is fairly new and isn't in many dictionaries. Two of the few are Oxford Dictionaries Online, who define it as:
favourite
verb
...
5
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3answers
440 views
Origin of “booty”, meaning buttocks
According to etymonline the word booty is used to describe the female form as a sex object. It says the word is black slang from the 1920s. The definition is placed in the entry for booty meaning ...
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Why are pullovers and sweaters also called jumpers? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
What’s the difference between a jumper, a pullover, and a sweater?
Different Meanings of ‘Jumper’ (Transatlantic embarassment)
While the connection between the words ...
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196 views
What's the etymology of the word “zilch”?
What's the origin of the word "zilch" and how it came to mean nothing?
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228 views
Origin of “canoodle”
There have been times in my life where I've enjoyed kissing and cuddling. I'm sure many of you can think of times you've enjoyed canoodling on the couch. Especially in these colder months.
Now I'm ...
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What's the upshot?
Upshot has been used in my presence about six times today. I know what it means in the figurative sense, and I assumed it was derived from sports so I looked up its etymology.
Dictionary.com ...
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OED Appeals: Antedatings of “party animal”
The OED has made a public appeal for help in tracing the history of some English words, including:
party animal
noun earlier than 1982
When the OED added its entry for party animal, ...
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4answers
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Does “grim” share an etymology with the surname “Grimm”?
People have often punned about Grimm's fairy tales being very grim. For example, TV Tropes has the trope Grimmification about tales being made more grim. (The Brothers Grimm didn't engage in ...
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Origin of “quid” in its sense of a sovereign or guinea
What is the etymological origin of quid in its sense of a sovereign or guinea?
While preparing the question Origin of “not for quids” phrase I noticed that etymonline's quid entry merely says
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1answer
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Origin of “not for quids” phrase
At various times I've supposed the informal Australian phrase “not for quids” (which apparently is analogous to “not at any price”) derives from quid, which refers to sovereigns, or guineas. At ...
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2answers
108 views
Is English 'issue' etymologically related to Russian 'ищу'? [closed]
I've noted that English word issue sounds like Russian word ищу, which means "I search for".
Issue is something for which a solution needs to be found. So having an issue is closely related with ...
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1answer
376 views
What's the origin of the expression “Them's the breaks”?
What's the origin of the expression "Them's the breaks", meaning "that's how the cookie crumbles"?
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“He rolled his toilet things into his housewife”
From C.S. Forester's Hornblower and the Hotspur:
[The naval captain] rolled his toilet things into his housewife and tied the tapes.
ODO does provide a second definition for housewife which ...
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158 views
Etymology for the phrase “Go to hell”
I've learned the meaning of "Go to hell" from the dictionary as "used to express angry rejection of someone or something" , I am curious about its etymology. If any body knows, please explain it to ...
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0answers
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How did “Christmas” end up being “Xmas”? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Why do some words have “X” as a substitute?
I went to Online Etymology and this is what I found:
"Christmas," 1551, X'temmas, wherein the X is an abbreviation for ...
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1answer
139 views
Etymology of the phrase “chicken out”
I've learned the meaning of chicken out from the dictionary, I am curious about its etymology. If any body knows, please explain it to me.
I have done my part of research by Googling "etymology for ...
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1answer
400 views
Etymology of “history” and why the “hi-” prefix?
According to Etymonline, history comes from the same root as story. If they are from the same word, where does hi- come from? Is it just because of the English habit of taking names from other ...
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Is 'worse' the only comparative that has neither -er nor more?
There was a question recently about comparatives and it got me thinking about how comparatives are formed.
There are those that take -er and those that use more to indicate comparison, but is worse ...
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1answer
376 views
“Nowadays” versus “now days” [closed]
Recently, I was auto-corrected by a word processor when I typed in "now days" to "nowadays." Why did it do this to me? "Nowadays" looks and sounds silly, incorrect, and made-up to me.
Which version ...
5
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3answers
162 views
What is actually being doubled when someone has to “double back”?
I have frequently heard this phrase and used it myself when I've gone in a wrong direction either physically or at work metaphorically. However, I wonder why the phrase is double back, since once you ...
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2answers
355 views
Origin of “for the birds” (Trivial; worthless; only of interest to gullible people.)
I really have looked, but the best I can come up with is this
To say that something is "for the birds" is to call it horse manure. Dating from the days of horse-drawn traffic, the expression is ...
6
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2answers
207 views
Meaning of “Y-o-u-u Tom!”
In the opening chapter of Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom's aunt Polly calls out to him in a rather peculiar fashion:
She went to the open door and stood in it, and looked out among the ...
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2answers
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Where is the “pere” in “ammeter”?
The instrument to measure current in amperes is called ammeter, while the instrument to measure charge in coulombs is called coulombmeter.
What happened to the -pere? Is there a historical reason for ...
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142 views
Etymology of “What could (possibly) go wrong?”
What is the (likely) origin of the popular usage of the phase "What could go wrong?" or "What could possibly go wrong?" as a theatrical plot device or ironic commentary? Does this usage pre-date or ...
3
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1answer
378 views
Origin of “bite your tongue” as a response
When someone says something unpleasant or rude, often the reply is "Bite your tongue!". But where did this come from? I can find a number of sources explaining that to bite one's tongue is to hold it ...
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1answer
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What's the meaning and origin of “Herp Derp”?
I have seen, usually in internet meme jokes, the term "herp derp" being used in a derogatory sense, but I don't know what it mean exactly — apart from the fact it seems to be related with dumbness or ...
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Forming occupational nouns: Why do you say “butcher” and not “butchian” or “butchor”?
Question: Occupational nouns (butcher, sailor, musician, etc.) have various suffixes in English (er, or, ee, ant, etc.). Is there a set of rules to form occupational nouns from the verbs or their ...
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1answer
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What is the meaning “borderline cuckoo” [closed]
Please read below excerpt from "Revolution 2020" by "Chetan Bhagat"
I didn't give a fuck about Raghav anymore, He had anyway become borderline cuckoo, with his pink- newspaper. Aarti deserved ...
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1answer
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What do you call a past participle+noun construction clause such as “No offense meant” “Your point taken,” “With that said,” and “Given that”?
In reference to my question about the usage of “No offense meant/taken,” I noticed that there are a lot of shortened forms like “No offense meant/taken,” “Your point taken,” “That said,” and “Given ...
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3answers
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Origin and scope of “cruft”
I just had to look up "cruft" (jargon for software or hardware that is of poor quality), as used in a comment to an earlier question.
But I can't find any details of etymology, and I don't know how ...
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2answers
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Etymologies of “basilisk” and “basilica”
I recently confused a "basilica" with a "basilisk", with the former being a church building and the latter being a mythical snake-like creature.
The similarities of the two words made me curious of ...
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Origin of the expression 'hard by'?
There's an expression "hard by", which I understand to mean "nearby", "close by". I don't know if it could be called an idiom, but it baffled me when I first encountered it in the translation of ...
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2answers
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Is “No offense meant (taken)” well-accepted English expression?
I’ve seen the phrase “No offense taken” in the answers to the comments in EL&U site.
None of online Cambridge, Oxford and Merriam-Webster dictionary registers this usage, nor does Google Ngram.
...
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2answers
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basketball expression 'from downtown'
In NBA basketball, TV commentators use the expression "shoot from downtown" when a player shoots beyond the 3-point line. What is the origin of this expression?
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What is the origin for meaning of “Wild-card”?
Please go through the below excerpt from "The tales of Kasi" by "Madhira Subbanna Deekshitulu"
'Kasyam maranam mukti', goes the sanskrit saying, which means dying in Kasi leads to liberation. ...
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2answers
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How did “to lie” (i.e lie about something) and “to lie” (i.e. lie down) end up being spelled the same way?
I'm hoping to find out the history of how "to lie" as in say something dishonest and "to lie" as in rest horizontally end up being spelled the same way.
To lie (lie, lied, lied): a false statement ...
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3answers
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Etymology and meaning of the word “snog”
Having looked to urban dictionary, witionary, online etymology, dictionary.com, Wikipedia and wordfreaks.tribe.net, I have found a wide variance in the etymology and definition of the word snog. I ...
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What is the origin of the expression “ya think”?
Maybe I'm just slow on the uptake, but the expression "ya think" seems to have recently become nearly universal, at least as viewed from the US and the UK, where I encounter it all the time, spoken by ...
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2answers
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What's the etymology of “Oscar”?
Wiktionary gives this:
Irish Osgar, from os (“deer”) + cara (“friend”) ; resuscitated by James Mcpherson in The Works of Ossian (1765). Napoleon, an admirer of the Ossianic poems, chose it for his ...
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“S'il vous plaît” = “If you please”?
In Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot detective stories, Poirot uses the phrase “if you please” a lot. Does this come from the French phrase “s’il vous plaît”?
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What is the origin and scope of usage of the phrase “So long…” used to bid goodbye? [closed]
We often colloquially use the phrase so long to say goodbye. For eg. So long, we'll see you next week or He said so long and left.
What is the origin of this phase? Rather, how did it come into ...
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1answer
176 views
Pronunciation of onomatopoeia, pharmacopoeia, etc
Words such as onomatopoeia and pharmacopoeia incorporate the Greek suffix -poeia, meaning to make or to prepare. Wiktionary's provided etymology for onomatopoeia reads:
From Ancient Greek ...
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1answer
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When was “ladyparts” first used to describe the genitalia of a woman?
When was the word ladyparts first used to describe the genitalia of a woman?
I tried to look it up in the British National Corpus but it returned no results.
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2answers
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Is the word Keen, meaning wail, related to a Hebrew word referring to mourning? [closed]
I often come across words that are the same or similar between English and other languages. In this case, I'm curious about the word "keen", meaning to wail, and the Hebrew word "kinah" (plural ...
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Origin of “Put up your dukes”
This link claims that one cannot be sure of origin of this phrase. Three explanations are given here, but they are not very convincing (I am not a native speaker).
In one of our newspapers, ...
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When did the term 'leverage' gain its verb/debt-related meaning?
I was discussing the much-abused business term leverage with a colleague and thought it would be interesting to know when the term as a verb entered popular use as opposed to the physics-related noun. ...
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1answer
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Meaning and origin of “Get someone's shirt out”
I was wondering to myself about the word "shirty". It seemed so curious a word. After all, what did its meaning have to do with shirts. "Were the two words even related?", I wondered.
So I looked up ...
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1answer
206 views
Where did the word “cocamame” come from? [closed]
Where did the word "cocamame" come from, and how did it get its connotation of meaning "idiotic"?
Is "cocamame" considered to be more or less severe than "idiotic" on the scale of idiocy?
Are there ...
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2answers
3k views
Origin of “More X than you can shake a stick at”
What is the origin of the phrase "more X than you can shake a stick at"?
Every website I've seen on this basically says the same thing (e.g., http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-sha2.htm):
Recorded ...
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2answers
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Can “number” in “number one” possibly be a Dutchism or a Germanism?
On a Dutch news site, someone claimed that the Dutch use of "nummer" (number) used in the meaning of "you are the number one", is actually an anglicism. It triggered my curiosity and I tried to find ...
