“Let’s face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on. English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn’t a race at all). That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.”
But, no, because there are reasons for all of those seemingly weird English bits.
Like “eggplant” is called “eggplant” because the white-skinned variety (to which the name originally applied) looks very egg-like.
The “hamburger” is named after the city of Hamburg.
The name “pineapple” originally (in Middle English) applied to pine cones (ie. the fruit of pines - the word “apple” at the time often being used more generically than it is now), and because the tropical pineapple bears a strong resemblance to pine cones, the name transferred.
The “English” muffin was not invented in England, no, but it was invented by an Englishman, Samuel Bath Thomas, in New York in 1894. The name differentiates the “English-style” savoury muffin from “American” muffins which are commonly sweet.
“French fries” are not named for their country of origin (also the United States), but for their preparation. They are French-cut fried potatoes - ie. French fries.
“Sweetmeats” originally referred to candied fruits or nuts, and given that we still use the term “nutmeat” to describe the edible part of a nut and “flesh” to describe the edible part of a fruit, that makes sense.
“Sweetbread” has nothing whatsoever to do with bread, but comes from the Middle English “brede”, meaning “roasted meat”. “Sweet” refers not to being sugary, but to being rich in flavour.
Similarly, “quicksand” means not “fast sand”, but “living sand” (from the Old English “cwicu” - “alive”).
The term boxing “ring” is a holdover from the time when the “ring” would have been just that - a circle marked on the ground. The first square boxing ring did not appear until 1838. In the rules of the sport itself, there is also a ring - real or imagined - drawn within the now square arena in which the boxers meet at the beginning of each round.
The etymology of “guinea pig” is disputed, but one suggestion has been that the sounds the animals makes are similar to the grunting of a pig. Also, as with the “apple” that caused confusion in “pineapple”, “Guinea” used to be the catch-all name for any unspecified far away place. Another suggestion is that the animal was named after the sailors - the “Guinea-men” - who first brought it to England from its native South America.
As for the discrepancies between verb and noun forms, between plurals, and conjugations, these are always the result of differing word derivation.
Writers write because the meaning of the word “writer” is “one who writes”, but fingers never fing because “finger” is not a noun derived from a verb. Hammers don’t ham because the noun “hammer”, derived from the Old Norse “hamarr”, meaning “stone” and/or “tool with a stone head”, is how we derive the verb “to hammer” - ie. to use such a tool. But grocers, in a certain sense, DO “groce”, given that the word “grocer” means “one who buys and sells in gross” (from the Latin “grossarius”, meaning “wholesaler”).
“Tooth” and “teeth” is the legacy of the Old English “toð” and “teð”, whereas “booth” comes from the Old Danish “boþ”. “Goose” and “geese”, from the Old English “gōs” and “gēs”, follow the same pattern, but “moose” is an Algonquian word (Abenaki: “moz”, Ojibwe: “mooz”, Delaware: “mo:s”). “Index” is a Latin loanword, and forms its plural quite predictably by the Latin model (ex: matrix -> matrices, vertex -> vertices, helix -> helices).
One can “make amends” - which is to say, to amend what needs amending - and, case by case, can “amend” or “make an amendment”. No conflict there.
“Odds and ends” is not word, but a phrase. It is, necessarily, by its very meaning, plural, given that it refers to a collection of miscellany. A single object can’t be described in the same terms as a group.
“Teach” and “taught” go back to Old English “tæcan” and “tæhte”, but “preach” comes from Latin “predician” (“præ” + “dicare” - “to proclaim”).
“Vegetarian” comes of “vegetable” and “agrarian” - put into common use in 1847 by the Vegetarian Society in Britain.
“Humanitarian”, on the other hand, is a portmanteau of “humanity” and “Unitarian”, coined in 1794 to described a Christian philosophical position - “One who affirms the humanity of Christ but denies his pre-existence and divinity”. It didn’t take on its current meaning of “ethical benevolence” until 1838. The meaning of “philanthropist” or “one who advocates or practices human action to solve social problems” didn’t come into use until 1842.
We recite a play because the word comes from the Latin “recitare” - “to read aloud, to repeat from memory”. “Recital” is “the act of reciting”. Even this usage makes sense if you consider that the Latin “cite” comes from the Greek “cieo” - “to move, to stir, to rouse , to excite, to call upon, to summon”. Music “rouses” an emotional response. One plays at a recital for an audience one has “called upon” to listen.
The verb “to ship” is obviously a holdover from when the primary means of moving goods was by ship, but “cargo” comes from the Spanish “cargar”, meaning “to load, to burden, to impose taxes”, via the Latin “carricare” - “to load on a cart”.
“Run” (moving fast) and “run” (flowing) are homonyms with different roots in Old English: “ærnan” - “to ride, to reach, to run to, to gain by running”, and “rinnan” - “to flow, to run together”. Noses flow in the second sense, while feet run in the first. Simillarly, “to smell” has both the meaning “to emit” or “to perceive” odor. Feet, naturally, may do the former, but not the latter.
“Fat chance” is an intentionally sarcastic expression of the sentiment “slim chance” in the same way that “Yeah, right” expresses doubt - by saying the opposite.
“Wise guy” vs. “wise man” is a result of two different uses of the word “wise”. Originally, from Old English “wis”, it meant “to know, to see”. It is closely related to Old English “wit” - “knowledge, understanding, intelligence, mind”. From German, we get “Witz”, meaning “joke, witticism”. So, a wise man knows, sees, and understands. A wise guy cracks jokes.
The seemingly contradictory “burn up” and “burn down” aren’t really contradictory at all, but relative. A thing which burns up is consumed by fire. A house burns down because, as it burns, it collapses.
“Fill in” and “fill out” are phrasal verbs with a difference of meaning so slight as to be largely interchangeable, but there is a difference of meaning. To use the example in the post, you fill OUT a form by filling it IN, not the other way around. That is because “fill in” means “to supply what is missing” - in the example, that would be information, but by the same token, one can “fill in” an outline to make a solid shape, and one can “fill in” for a missing person by taking his/her place. “Fill out”, on the other hand, means “to complete by supplying what is missing”, so that form we mentioned will not be filled OUT into we fill IN all the missing information.
An alarm may “go off” and it may be turned on (ie. armed), but it does not “go on”. That is because the verb “to go off” means “to become active suddenly, to trigger” (which is why bombs and guns also go off, but do not go on).
I have never been so turned on in my entire life.
Language boner. Also, have never seen white eggplants! Now it makes sense!
A cherry man through and through… One of my favorite things about Steven Universe are all the subtle references to previous episodes. It’s little call backs like these that show how Rebecca Sugar and her team always go that extra mile.
It makes it feel like a real world. Like, it’s not just referencing previous episodes it’s referencing jokes he’s made in his life and makes the world seem so much more real. It’s not to the extent of a running gag either.
I was creating a
website for a local restaurant. The owner needed a new website because the
college kid who had created it wasn’t updating it in a timely fashion. That
should have been my first clue, but I was just starting to freelance and wanted
the job to build my resume.
When I started,
she told me that she wanted to be able to make updates to the website herself,
so I built it in WordPress and planned to train her when the website was
complete.
She sent me the
information for her site and I realized that she didn’t own her domain name or
hosting. They were all owned by the college kid who was currently doing her
website.
Me: You’ll have to
get ownership of the domain and the hosting before we can upload the site to
your URL.
Client: Okay, I’ll talk
to him and get that taken care of.
I started working
on building her site, and waited for her to get back to me once she’d done
that. One month later she called me, but to complain.
Client: It’s been a month
and you haven’t done anything!
Me: Actually, I’ve done quite a lot of work, it’s just not
up on the site yet. You don’t own the domain so I can’t upload it.
Client: I
can’t see how this is my fault.
That’s not where the headaches stopped. Once the domain wrinkle was
ironed out I started to revise her content and when I sent it to her to
review.
Client: I don’t have time
to “review” your work! Just do it right the first time!
Me: Okay… well, just
so I know what you’re looking for in terms of how the website looks, could you
send me some samples of what you’d like, with some notes about what you like
about them?
She sent me about
10 websites, each completely different from the other. They ranged from
fantastic to ‘90s bad, with no indication of what she liked and didn’t like.
Finally she sent me the website for Paula Deen’s restaurant, which was of
course exactly what
she wanted. I used the basic layout and style while adding her brand colors to
give her the look and feel I thought she was looking for.
My client had
completely redesigned her restaurant, so the photos I had from the old website
were obsolete. She didn’t have anyone to take photos so I ended up going to the
restaurant to take the photos myself, and I didn’t even charge her for the
time. At this point I was so desperate to get her website done I didn’t even care.
When she looked
at the website on her computer at one of her restaurants, it wasn’t rendering
correctly. Since she couldn’t understand how to take a screenshot to show me, I
ended up driving there (fortunately it’s close) and discovered that she had a bootlegged
fake version of Windows OS. Of course, she insisted it was really Windows - I’m
assuming whoever set up her computers just told her it was what she wanted and
gave it to her because it was cheaper.
I finally,
finally finished the project and needed to train her to make updates. She
decided her son, one of the managers, would get training too. I met them at one
of their restaurants because I prefer to train people on their own computers
where they are more comfortable. I assumed we would be training in her office,
but instead she brought her laptop to the bar and expected me to train them
while they waited on customers. Obviously, it was a disaster, and at the end of
the session she mentioned it would be great if I could just keep updating the
website for her, at which I politely declined.
I sent her the
bill. It was what we’d agreed, no more, and was under $1000.
Client: I think you’re
charging too much. This isn’t nearly as good as Paula Deen’s site.
Me: Well, Paula Deen
was probably able to pay a larger firm thousands of dollars.
Client: Really? I would
have thought it would cost $200, tops.
I have never been so happy to be done with a
client.
I am Silver Tongue, I am an artist. I have many characters and you can check out my art in the art tag. I occasionally practice witchcraft though I don't do anything too complicated. I am girl 2 and don't know what else to put here.
