Questions tagged [history]
Questions about the history and trends of the English language.
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"To live and die against all manner of folks?"
I came across this oath taken by Prince of Wales in the ceremony of investiture,
I, Charles, Prince of Wales, do become your liege man of life and limb
and of earthly worship, and faith and truth ...
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Has there ever been slang-dense phrasing?
In today's culture, mainly with the rise in Gen Z kids getting online, slang in English seems to have become more fluid.
In a YouTube video from JackSepticEye, while he was reading sentences that ...
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Etymology of the name Wales/Welsh in modern English: which one is the basic term?
I am interested in the way the name of Wales (and of the Welsh) has been transliterated/translated in other languages.
(I have become interested in that because, as a native Romanian speaker I have ...
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Why is the adjective "below" rare compared to adjective "above"?
Above and below can be used as both an adverb and an adjective to indicate an earlier or a later part of a piece of writing respectively. However, adjective below is rare compared to adjective above (...
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Which came first in English, capitalization of first word in sentence, or period?
Does Old English have the idea of capitalized first letter of words? And does it have the idea of periods? I know periods sort of came about in Latin perhaps, but don't know what came first. Did we ...
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Do we use "early" or "late" to refer to the end of a decade in BCE?
So I'm writing an essay in which I want to refer to the years 483-480 BCE. Are these the late 480s or the early 480s? 83-80 are less than 89-84 in magnitude, but in BCE they are more recent than the ...
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What did daughters (roughly 19 and 11) affectionately call their mothers in the 19th century (1883ish)?
I'm writing a short historical fiction essay on Mercy Brown and family, and was wondering what Mary Brown (19) and Mercy (11) would have called her while she was on her death bed with consumption. ...
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What is the history behind how date is read?
I was trying to find out if there were reading guidelines for dates, e.g., for broadcasting or competitive recitation. There seem to be a few different accepted ways of reading out dates, e.g., 1, or ...
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Why isn't the preposition "from" used to form self-sufficient phrasal verbs?
Let's define a self-sufficient phrasal verb as a phrasal verb that does not require a complement. For example, "come in" is a self-sufficient phrasal verb because you can say, "Come in!" Analogously, "...
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How can there be any indicative if-clauses?
As far as I know, if-clauses always describe theoretical situations. Sometimes the theory is very obvious and self-evident, but it remains a theory. So how can we use the indicative in if-clauses all ...
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Is the vocative comma a recent thing?
It's usually considered necessary in the modern day, but I find the further back you go, the less frowned on its absence seems to be. I seem to remember a few vocative sentences in The Hobbit without ...
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Why do Americans pronounce "Noo York" the way they do? [duplicate]
I'm wondering if there is a historical explanation as to why the New in "New York" is pronounced /nu/ (as in "Noodles") rather than /nju/ (as in RP "New Year").
Has this always been the case? Or did ...
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What does "double oughts" mean? [closed]
I've watched some documentary about the 21st century history
in which the narrator said "when the 21st century began, it
didn't even have a name" and then someone replied by saying
"the ...
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When was "untactful" first used?
I came across "untactful" in a story and wondered when it was first used and how it came to be commonly used in speech. I've always used "tactless".
I checked a lot of dictionaries with no results.
I ...
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Why the structure "was born", and not "is born" like in many other languages?
My question is why English uses the past "was" in "I was born", and many other languages (the majority of the European languages for instance), use the present "is" with this past participle?
(Je ...
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What is the meaning of "annihilated in detail"?
I ran across the phrase "annihilated in detail" while listening to Professor Garrett G. Fagan's instruction regarding the History of Ancient Rome. This comes from a lecture on Marius and Sulla with ...
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Where does the expression "triple-A" come from?
The term "AAA" or "triple-A" is a term mainly used nowadays in the video game industry, according to Wikipedia,
... for video games produced and distributed by a mid-sized or major
publisher, ...
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How and why have French words arrived in the English language? [closed]
I've just finished watching Stranger Things, and in one episode, Nancy mentions a cul-de-sac, which is essentially a French word (I'm French and we recognize when English uses French words, with this ...
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Where was the term "A1" first used?
The Merriam-Webster dictionary says that "A1" means "of the finest quality" and it says that the term was first used in the year 1801 (with no reference):
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/...
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Why is it a *canary* in a coalmine? [closed]
I understand what the idiom means: as per this question, it means a person or creature unwittingly used as a test for danger, often destructively.
I understand why coalmines: as depositories of ...
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Was 'help' pronounced starting with a vowel sound?
In The King James Bible, Genesis:
2:20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
I have ...
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Why does the word "school" contain an 'h'?
Considering the low prevalence of words in English written with the letter combination "sch", why is the word "school" written the way it is, rather than simply "scool"?
As far as I could tell, the ...
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How long has the expression 'underage woman' been in use, and is it an oxymoron?
A blog entry posted today at The Atlantic online—"The Myth of the 'Underage Woman'," by Megan Garber—argues that "underage woman" is an oxymoron:
The phrase is wrong in every sense: There is no ...
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When to drop AD and BC from dates?
I see some texts using AD and BC or BCE and CE. But other texts just have the date, like 1992 and it is understood. Is there a rule of thumb for when to add these prefixes? I'm using Chicago-Turabian.
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History, origin & usage of term ‘showroom’ instead of shop / store / storefront?
What is the history, origin & usage of the term ‘showroom’ instead of shop / store / storefront?
How / where did it come about?
Who came up with it?
While the term appears in Lexico, there is no ...
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Did the meaning of "significant" change in the 20th century?
In Do We Really Need the S-word? in 'American Scientist', the author Megan D. Higgs writes
Did the people who introduced the word’s use in statistics intend for it to be interpreted according to ...
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Origin of the suffix in hippocampus
Hippocampus, a tiny organ in the brain - named after its resemblance to a tiny sea creature, the sea-horse (the genus of which is led to the original coinage of 'hippocampus') - has been some source ...
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History of Neither Nor - Negative Meaning with Negative Verb Structure
I know that neither–nor yields a negative meaning if used in a sentence that has a positive verb structure. That is, when we say:
Neither George nor James goes to school.
we mean:
George does ...
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What are the indigenous English words for a prostitute?
Prostitution is referred to as the oldest profession, but the English word "prostitute" is a borrowing that started being used in the English language around 1600. I would like to know what the ...
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What is the origin of “Psych!”?
What is the origin of the phrase “Psych!!!” like when someone is saying something jokingly and they’re taking it back?
Often believed, by those who don't understand the term's origin, to be spelt (or ...
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Why did the use of "if you shall" and "if you should" dramatically decline?
Google Books statistics indicate that the use of the expression "if you should" and especially of the expression "if you shall" per unit of text length dramatically and steadily declined since the ...
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What is this word in a sample of blackletter script?
What is this word "seneney"? Am I right?
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Is there anyone whose first name is the same as their middle name? [closed]
For example, is there anyone with a full name like "David David Smith", where David is the first name and David is also the middle name? Also, I am wondering if there is anyone with a first and middle ...
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What did "Aryan" mean in the 1930s?
Anthony Burgess once said, (through the narrator of one of his books…)
“The term Aryan has a purely philological significance. It can be applied only to languages.”
-Earthly Powers pg 371
The ...
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Do the English have an ancient (obsolete) verb for the action of the book opening? [closed]
Do the English have an ancient (obsolete) verb for the action of the book opening?
For example, in Russian we say otkrit' (open the book), but in the Old slavonic the verb razognuti (to unbend the ...
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First use of capital letters [closed]
The first latin script which consisted of both majuscule and minuscule letters (lowercase and uppercase, or small and capital letters) is Carolingian minuscule. It is a fact. But what is unknown to me ...
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When did Monkeys start making wrenches?
Why is the pipe wrench often called a monkey wrench?
From the Ferris State University Jim Crow Museum website…
Q: Did Jack Johnson invent the wrench?
A: Jack Johnson, the first Black ...
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Where does the term “physical” come from?
Physical in the bodily sense appears to have developed independently from its root original term physic. So, for instance, you can say you do physical exercise to keep your body, not your physic, in ...
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What is the use of the double L in Llama and double A in Aardvark? [duplicate]
Always wanted a clear explanation as to why these animals had double letters at the beginning of the spelling. What’s up with that?
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What did pooh mean in the early 1900s
When a 7-year-old child is new to Winnie the Pooh that child often interprets it to be poo. I'd like to be able to explain the history of that word.
When I look it up I find
an exclamation of disdain,...
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Since when is "Ese" used in American "Spanglish"?
My question is about "Ese" when used to designate a person.
How long has this usage been part of common speech in the US? 80s? 90s? Earlier? Later?
I am thinking of 'Ese' as it used by Latino film ...
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Different etymologies for spoken and written forms
I know a word in another language which appears at first to have a highly irregular spelling that does not match the pronunciation. However, further examination suggests that the spoken and written ...
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When was "Chronic" first used as its own antonym?
The word "Chronic" means "long lasting", or "occurring over an extended period of time". A chronic illness one that you will have for a long time (if not for your entire life), or take a long time to ...
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"Indian" comes from Italian/Spanish "gente in dios" (God-like people)? False etymology?
A while ago in January The Black Hebrew Israelites were speaking/shouting/proselytizing to surrounding people at Lincoln Memorial. The speaker claimed that the word "Indian" means "savage". A member ...
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What's this "Jl. Sg." appended to a name in the Social Register?
Screenshotted from the (fictitious) "1929 Social Register" in the opening sequence of the film Down to Their Last Yacht (1934).
"Miss Linda Colt-Stratton" I get, but what's the "Jl. Sg." after her ...
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When did "committee" become a collective noun, and why?
According to dictionary.com, "committee" comes from late Middle English, with the suffix -ee added to the word "commit". Typical use of the -ee suffix would imply the meaning of "one who commits" or "...
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Why has the word "discombobulate" stuck around? [closed]
I was thinking of there being very silly sounding words. The first one that popped to mind was "discombobulated"... and then that was it.
Is it just me, or are silly words not really around anymore? ...
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Singular "they" in 1954
During the June 13, 1954, episode of American television's What's My Line, the panel was blindfolded and had to identify the guests, Les Paul and Mary Ford, by asking a series of questions that the ...
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No Gender Nouns [duplicate]
Why do adjectives and some nouns in English not have gender?
Is there a history beyond that?
Don't this cause some ambiguity in the language itself?
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Schools and Shoals
School, as a group of fish, entered Middle English:
late Middle English: from Middle Low German, Middle Dutch schōle, of West Germanic origin; related to Old English scolu ‘troop’. (NOAD)
Shoal, ...
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