dawn.vogel | June 7, 2019
So many English words are derived from words from other languages. Things like cappuccino make sense–we know that’s an Italian word when we see it. But jeans? You’d think that’s one of the most quintessentially American words there is. Guess again. It’s Italian too! This article gives the etymologies of eight words, some of which […]
dawn.vogel | May 3, 2019
The Etymology Nerd is a fantastic site for those of us who love etymology and infographics! Here, you can find a BUNCH of etymology infographics, with a focus on place names in cities. But there are plenty of other etymology infographics too, dealing with a wide variety of topics. I particularly like this infographic with […]
dawn.vogel | April 5, 2019
If you’re a fan of etymology, check out Mashed Radish’s etymology of the day! Though it doesn’t seem to have any recent updates, there are a ton of word origins explained, complete with fun pictures!
dawn.vogel | February 22, 2019
Sometimes, where we think a word came from is not necessarily the true story. According to Merriam-Webster, folk etymology is “the transformation of words so as to give them an apparent relationship to better-known or better-understood words.” This article talks about a number of cases of folk etymology, including the source of the words and […]
dawn.vogel | January 25, 2019
If you’re as fascinated by word origins as I am, you might like this list: Etymologically Speaking. It’s one of the more extensive lists I’ve found for word origins, plus it also does some cool things with looking at the same word in several languages, showing how those words wound up similar or very different! […]
dawn.vogel | January 11, 2019
Why doesn’t anything rhyme with purple? Or orange? It might have to do with the origins of those words. This article on Gizmodo talks about the etymology of colors, or how they got their English names. But did you know that not all languages have words for every color? And there’s also the belief that […]
dawn.vogel | November 2, 2018
If you’ve ever wondered how famous bands got their name, look no further! Wikipedia has you covered with this list of band name etymologies! It’s interesting to see the prevalence of names that come from dreams and also from Tolkien. Take a look through and see if your favorites are mentioned!
dawn.vogel | June 15, 2018
Grammarly has a neat little article including ten interesting facts about the English language, which you can read here. In it, you can learn all about pangrams, ambigrams, and ghost words! The most fascinating fact to me is the last one, which states that the word “girl” did not originally mean a female child, but […]
dawn.vogel | February 9, 2018
I’m always interested in linguistics and etymologies. Here’s an article from a few years back where the Oxford Royale Academy has named 14 words with the most fascinating word origins in the English language.
dawn.vogel | February 2, 2018
Did you know that originally, February didn’t even exist as a month? And that the Roman god Februus is named after a Roman festival from which the month takes its name, not the other way around? If you’re interested in word origins, check out this article about the origins of the name of the second […]
