Questions tagged [history]
Questions about the history and trends of the English language.
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What sport is being referenced in the phrase "take one for the team"?
"Take one for the team" is a ubiquitous expression that can quickly be understood as putting yourself in an unfavorable position for the benefit of the larger group. But the expression ...
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What is the etymology or history of "Your" for addressing a noble?
There are several ways of noble addressing, such as:
Third person - female (Her)
Third person - male (His)
Second person (Your)
e.g : Your Highness
But, what are the meanings behind that?
Why it ...
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What is the name of the people that yell "repent!"?
I'm thinking of men and women etc. that visit towns or town squares and yell about end of days, repent, Jesus will return and all that. Often they bear a cross or signage. It's definitely been a ...
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First appearance of "ran over a cockerel" Joke
With the death of the UK Comedy Legend that was Barry Cryer, many of the obituaries are mentioning his favorite joke (which is proliferating across the internet yet again)
... was once asked by the ...
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Jury: oath-takers or judges? [closed]
Familiar as we may be with the modern jury, the right to judgment by peers is set forth in the Magna Carta:
NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or ...
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History of "tough as nails"
I would like to know the history of this idiom because I have heard it so many times throughout the year, especially in movies.
I understand the meaning of it as "very tough". However, I am ...
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Was the word "inoculation" regularly used for introducing a disease for purposes other than inducing immunity?
While researching the history/historiography of the British potentially spreading smallpox via blankets at the siege of Fort Pitt during Pontiac's War, I came across General Amherst's letters. These ...
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Why 'd' in 'Aeneid'?
The Latin poem Aeneis is Aeneid in English. How did the last d come about?
A few suspects by quick search:
/ð/ → /d/ shift in English, but there must be a shift /s/ → /ð/.
It seems romance languages ...
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Origin of the Expression: "Yes, Harriet"
When I was a child (in the 1970s) when my mother asked my father to do something that he had already planned to do, he would say "Yes, Harriet". Can anyone tell me where this expression &...
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About the words "Speed" and "Velocity"
Physics guys closed these questions so I am here
From our daily experiences we know that whenever a body is moving with certain speed, it is always associated with a certain direction. How can you ...
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Why ships and countries are 'her' in the old texts but not 'it'?
I have read both of these two good questions and answers and I got the answer of my question, that in the modern English "it" is used more than "her" while referring to a ship or ...
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When did the change occur in meaning of Afghan from an ethnic group to "person from Afghanistan?"
A related question can be found here, dealing with the usage of
"Afghan" to mean "inhabitant of Afghanistan." Which term is correct — "Afghan" or "Afghani"?
I'm ...
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When did the California Vowel Shift begin?
When did the California Vowel Shift begin: as soon as California was settled by English speakers? Or did it develop later?
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What did Adam Smith mean by "wretched natives of singular colour"?
In Book IV, Chapter 7 of The Wealth of Nations, when Adam Smith discusses the return of Columbus, he makes this statement:
... all of which [some objects] were preceded by six or seven of the ...
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How did the name pronunciation of the letter Z as 'zee' become the consensus in American English?
According to Wikipedia as well as my own experiences interacting with people of different nationalities, the pronunciation of 'Z' seems to have maintained some variation of the hard t- sound from the ...
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Why does the demonym "Canadian" appear irregular?
In particular -
Given that people from America are Americans, why are people from Canada not *Canadans?
I'm in search of a historical and etymological answer, addressing questions such as the date and ...
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What are the origins of title case? [duplicate]
As far as I'm aware, English is the only language that uses title case for capitalizing titles of media, article headlines, buttons in computer interfaces and more. However, I could find little on the ...
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What is this naming convention called? [duplicate]
Many historical figures (of antiquity) have names of the form "X the Y". Some real, historical examples are:
Wayland the Smith
William the Conquerer
Attila the Hun
This concept has also ...
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Is there a word in a dead or lost language that we lost the definition to? [closed]
Is there a word we lost the definition to?
A word whose definition we lost to history?
Something that is a part of our history but we forgot the meaning with time
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Why the "wedded" in "wedded wife"?
Typical wedding vows, per e.g. this website, often have phrasing like this (emphasis mine):
[Groom’s name], do you take [Bride’s name] to be your wedded wife, to live together in marriage? Do you ...
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Did quotation marks historically have other applications or uses, like for emphasis?
I have frequently observed instances of quotation marks being used in interesting ways, often with rather funny implications.
Here are some notable examples of unnecessary or suspicious quotation ...
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Etymology of “that” as both pronoun and conjunction
“That” can be used both as a pronoun and as a conjunction. For example,
I know that it is raining.
Give me that.
This is unique to English as far as I know. In French and Spanish, for example, the ...
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Why do we say latitude and longitude instead of longitude and latitude? [closed]
Latitude measures degree from the equator and longitude measures the degree from the prime meridian, each corresponding to the x-axis and y-axis of the world. However, normally when we are talking ...
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Is there a word for the bias of not knowing what came before?
Is there a word or phrase for the bias of not knowing what came before? Of thinking that an idea under consideration is truly new? I'm looking for a word to describe the bias that comes from this ...
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What is the origin of "set" (noun) as used in "television set"? Tubes?
The colloquial (and mostly archaic) term "television set" invokes a narrow use of set (noun). Merriam-Webster defines this as:
(22) an apparatus of electronic components assembled so as to ...
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Etymological origin and earliest recorded occurrence of 'saunter' in English
Someone just sent me a quotation from the explorer/naturalist John Muir, in which he makes the following etymological claim:
Do you know the origin of that word saunter? It's a beautiful word. Away ...
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Publick or Public? in the 18th and 19th Century Britain
The spelling of -ck was more popular than -c in many words in Britain. But in America, Noah Webster proposed around 1800 to replace -ck by -c, which caused the widespread of this -c spelling in US.
In ...
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Did "A F" exist as an intensifier prior to social media?
"A F" is short for "as fuck". It popped into my lexicon a few years ago, when I started hearing it in Youtube videos. (See this video as an example, although this wasn't where I ...
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Minimizing the Number of Syllables when Pronouncing Years
Question
Do native English speakers minimize the number of syllables when they pronounce years?
Furthermore, is there linguistics/psychology literature on this phenomenon?
Observations
Here is a ...
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Are there historical examples of "unchartered territory" used correctly?
People have been mistakenly saying "unchartered" instead of "uncharted" when speaking informally, but now even major news networks are doing it. E.g.:
CTV News — 'Unchartered ...
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Around 1970 in Britain, was this use of 'shall', in 'You shall go (=I let you go)', already out-of-date in daily conversation?
A striking grammatical difference between BE and AE is the various uses of auxiliary verbs (now, modal verbs) of will and shall. When I was a high school boy studying English without any chance of ...
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Around 1960 in Britain "Have you a camera?" or "Do you have a camera?"
Around 1960, when we began learning English in Japan, we were taught British English. To our great surprise, we were forced to change into American English in the next grade. Japanese English teachers ...
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Why is the zh (ʒ) sound so infrequent in English?
I've always heard that the "zh" (ʒ) sound (e.g. in "vision", "usually") was an uncommon sound in the English language. A quick Google search returns multiple results (...
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Why do translations refer to the original language with a definite article, e.g. "translated from the Spanish"?
In general in English, we don't ever apply the definitive article to languages. We don't say "He speaks the Japanese" or "It was originally written in the French."
But for ...
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Is the phrase "stone-throwing devil" actually a slur?
Inspired by this question.
What is the etymology of the phrase "stone-throwing devil"? Is there any evidence that it has been used as either a racial or religious slur historically or in ...
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Are there rules or trends for -ty vs -ness in general? Could "thoroughty" have been a word if thoroughness hadn't been there?
In a recent SE answer I've written:
I think that other answerers can address this with more historical thoroughty than I, so I'll defer to their expertise, but it sounds like the LRO frozen orbit is ...
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Is "spilled milk" a 1600's era euphemism regarding rejected intercourse?
Motivation:
My daughters love and admire the character of Molly Bannaky and her descendant Benjamin Bannaker:
https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2008/07/molly-welsh-banneker.html
The impact of Benjamin ...
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History of the use of "none" for countable nouns
The concept of countable nouns seems to be rapidly disappearing from modern English (e.g. I'm seeing "the amount of people" with increasing frequency, even in reputable publications, which ...
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What could "mucka doozy" mean and where does it come from?
My first manager out of college used to throw around this phrase, "mucka doozy". I always understood it to be a 'big mess' or something to that effect. My spelling is only approximate, and ...
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What is the history behind “raze” and “raise” (two words that sound the same but mean nearly opposite things)? [closed]
How did the English language come to have two words, “raze” and “raise” that mean practically opposite things, but sound the same?
Merriam Webster definitions
Raze: to destroy to the ground
Raise: to ...
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What does "done wore out one" refer to in casual Southern US American?
In the highly racist and despicable, although humorous, song "Alabama n-word", apparently from the 1960s in the Southern USA, at 1:30 into the song, the lyrics go like this:
I'm glad this ...
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What exactly is a "ring-a-ding girl"?
It's been years since I watched this episode, but I remember being very confused about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring-a-Ding_Girl
"Ring-a-Ding Girl" is episode 133 of the American ...
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Was it common in Shakespeare's time for adverbial phrases and objects to precede the verb in spoken English?
I'm trying to come up with a list of differences between Shakespeare's manner of writing and modern English, and one of the big differences I've noticed is that Shakespeare often seems to put ...
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When referring to an event held in a country whose name has changed, should you use the new or old name
If I'm referring to an event that took place in Yakutsk in 1960, should I refer to Yakutsk, USSR, or Yakutsk, Russia?
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What does simple really mean in grammar?
Problems with explaining English grammar often reside in the terminology.
There is often a big assumption that we understand what the terms mean.
Simple is, in my opinion, one of the most important ...
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Would an American girl aged 12-14 really use the "F-word" casually like this in 1947?
In the 1997 movie "Lolita", in the beginning set in 1947, there is a scene where Dolores Haze (12 or 14, White, girl) has this conversation with a friend:
Mary Rose: "See you later, ...
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What function does the comma serve in the salutation of a letter, and when did it come about?
In a letter, we say "Dear Alexthecampbell," before starting the body. We then capitalize the first letter of the next sentence.
Since the salutation functions like a header and isn't part ...
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What were/are the rules regarding relative pronouns from c. 1800?
I've been reading some rather old literature, often ranging from the 18th Century through to the late 19th Century, and I'm trying to increase my comprehension of the material, at least to the extent ...
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Did the definition of Misogynist change?
I was looking in the library at my university, and found a yearbook from somewhere in the 1870s-80s. For the graduating class, the put their major, political party, religious denomination, and '...
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History of 'acronym' versus 'initialism'?
Nowadays on the internet there's a contingent who make a strong distinction between 'acronyms', which they say must be pronounced "phonetically" (for lack of a better term), and 'initialisms'...
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