In this episode, Ray chats with Mignon Fogerty, aka the Grammar Girl. "Good grammar" may seem like the epitome of prescriptivism, but when it comes to her "Quick and Dirty Tips", Mignon leans on a more ideologically neutral approach. Might you even call "good grammar" ...  a style choice? 

What can we learn about the nature of translation by reading a warning message in hundreds of different languages? In this episode, Keith Kahn-Harris discusses his latest book, The Babel Message, in which the mundane, multilingual warning message found inside Kinder Surprise Eggs ignites profound observations about the nature of language and the written word. 

To buy The Babel Message, click here.

What does "standing under" have to do with "understanding?" Nothing at all, which is why most of us probably overlook the obvious fact that "understand" is actually a compound word comprising "under" and "stand." In our exploration of this confusing etymology, we look at some archaic meanings of the preposition "under" in addition to words with similar semantic constructions in other languages. 

Today's episode is sponsored by Lingoda. To get 25% off your enrollment in the Lingoda Sprint Challenge, go to https://try.lingoda.com/Ray and use promo code WORDSFORGRANTED at check out. 

Today, ‘comedy’ is a genre of entertainment that makes us laugh. However, this was not always the case. The word derives from a Greek compound that most likely meant ‘revel song,’ and it's culturally rooted in an ancient festival called the ... penis parade? Yes, the penis parade. Yet humor was not always the main component of comedy as it is today. Exploring topics as disparate as Dante's Divine Comedy to Punch and Judy puppet shows, this episode covers a condensed history of the genre of comedy.

The word ‘tragedy’ is rooted in ancient Greek theater. It's a dramatic form that stills exists today, but what’s the word’s etymology? Is it connected to suffering? Despair? Heartache? No, no, and no. It most likely comes from a Greek word meaning ‘goat-song.’ In today's episode, we look at a few theories that explain this strange etymology.

The word ‘tyrant’ is steeped in the political history of Ancient Greece. However, it didn't always refer to cruel rulers. Originally, a ‘tyrant’ was a morally neutral word for someone who usurped the throne and took over leadership on their own terms. Most of the early Greek tyrants were actually lauded by their subjects.

Joining me in the historical exploration of tyrants and tyranny is Ryan Stitt from the History of Ancient Greece.

English uses many different suffixes to indicate ethnicities. Each suffix entered the language independently, and each suffix has a story to tell. This episode attempts to elucidate the geopolitical distribution of the four main categories of ethnic suffixation in English: -an (including -ian and -ean), -ish, -ese, and -i.

Today's episode looks at the evolution of the modern sense of the word filibuster. Borrowed from a Dutch word meaning ‘pirate,’ ‘filibuster’ originally referred to Americans who organized unauthorized military invasions of Spanish colonies in Central America and the West Indies.

In this episode, we explore the origins of the word ‘candidate.’ It derives from candidus, the Latin word for ‘white,’ which describes the typical attire worn by Roman politicians running for office. We also examine some unlikely cognates derived from this same root word. 

The presidential inauguration is a tradition inherited from Ancient Rome. The word ‘inauguration’ is rooted in augury, the Ancient Roman practice of interpreting omens based on the flight patterns of birds. Over the course of today's episode, we discuss how how this unlikely religious tradition gave us the sense of ‘inauguration’ used today.

The letter C has split personalities. Sometimes it has a hard K sound, and sometimes it has a soft S sound. Sometimes it's a part of letter combinations whose pronunciations vary from word to word. The causes of these split personalities are rooted in a complicated history that begins in Ancient Phoenicia.

Words for ‘tea’ in languages around the world fall into one of two etymological categories: te-derived and cha-derived. Both are ultimately derived from different dialects of Chinese. Based on the geolinguistic distribution of these two etymological categories, we can learn a lot about the history of the tea trade itself.

According to literary critic Raymond Williams, culture is ‘one of two or three most complicated words in the English language.’ Today's narrative traces the word's unexpected origins as a farming term to its social and anthropological senses today. Along the way, we'll explore many different perspectives on what a ‘culture’ really is is.

In Old English, the word "world", or weorold, did not refer to a place. It was a compound word comprising wer, meaing "man", and ald, meaning "age". "World" literally meant "the age of man", and in many of its earliest usages, it's more closely related to a man's "lifetime" or "lifespan" than the earth he inhabits. We also look at some unlikely cognates of "world", all of which share etymologies related to "manliness". 

The spelling of the word ‘two’ is un-phonetic. Today's episode explores the origins of its silent W and the circumstances that eroded its pronunciation. Along the way, we explore some less-than-obvious derivatives of the word "two" and the technical characteristics of vowels. 

Men's perfume known as cologne takes its name from the German city in which it was invented. But if Cologne is a German city, why does the perfume named after it have a distinctly French name? Why does the German language spell Köln with a K, while French and English spell ‘Cologne’ with a C? And where does the name of the city itself ultimately come from? Today's episode tackles the answers to these questions and more.

Today's episode explores the etymological and cultural connections between the words ‘sinister’ and ‘left,’ as in, ‘left-handed.’ In the world of Ancient Rome, the left hand was surrounded by an unlucky superstition. Though the superstition has faded away, the original word denoting this connection––sinister––has not. While the evolution of ‘sinister’ is the focus of today's episode, it fits into a larger theme of etymological biases against left-handedness found in languages around the world. 

Calques are words or phrases whose meanings have been literally translated from one language into another, aka ‘loan translations.’ Words such as flea market, skyscraper, and translation itself all came into English this way. Today's episode looks at a number of words that have been calqued into English and out of English.

What is the ‘true’ meaning of the expression ‘to beg the question?’ Well, it depends on what you mean by true. Today, ‘to beg the question’ is often used as a synonym for ‘to raise the question,’ but historically, ‘to beg the question’ had a very different meaning. It involved neither ‘begging’ nor a ‘question,’ but rather, a philosophical fallacy of circular reasoning that traces back to Aristotle. Over the course of about two thousand years, a series of mistranslations and semantic corruptions have resulted in the phrase’s modern ‘misusage.’

The word ostracism can be traced back to Ancient Athens. For the Ancient Athenians, ostracism was not a sociological phenomenon, but an electoral vote that sought to protect the integrity of democracy. Today's episode provides a concise overview of Ancient Athenian society and looks at the details of the ancient ostracism vote.

The professional/amateur dichotomy portrays amateurs as inept and inexperienced, but amateurs haven’t always had a bad name. In fact, ‘amateur’ derived from the Latin word for ‘love.’ Today's episode explores the negative evolution of the word as a product of capitalist values.

In today's episode, we look at the etymology of mouse, but really, it's a springboard into a far more complicated topic: the word "mice," its irregular plural form. Why do we say "mice" and not "mouses" when referring to more than one mouse? The answer lies in the grammar of an ancient tongue that predates modern English by thousands of years. This is the most linguistic-heavy episode of Words for Granted yet, so first-time listeners, beware!

The English language uses the word ‘cell’ in a handful of contexts. We have prison cells, brain cells, battery cells, and of course, cell phones. At first glance, these various uses of the word ‘cell’ seem unrelated, yet they’re all etymologically connected and can be traced back to a single source: medieval monasteries. In today's episode, we explore the unlikely historical relationship between the living quarters of Medieval Christian monks and the modern technology behind the cellular phone. 

Have you ever wondered how writing was invented - or, how many times it was invented? How many undeciphered scripts has the ancient world left us, and is there any hope in eventually deciphering them? In this interview with Silvia Ferrara, author of The Greatest Invention, we explore these questions and many more. 

To buy Silvia's book, click here. 

You can also support Words for Granted on Patreon!

The word ‘comfort’ once described the spiritual consolation given by God to an individual. Today, it describes commercialized products like air conditioners, tennis shoes, and sofas. A pretty drastic change, to say the least. How did this evolution take place? Today's episode looks at the impact of capitalism and consumerism on our ideas about what ‘comfort’ is. 

The word ‘meat’ once referred to all forms of solid food, not just animal flesh. In today's episode, we explore the ambiguities of the word ‘meat’ as it appears in the King James Bible. We also debunk a popular myth surrounding meat words such as pork, beef, and veal.

This episode explores polysemy, the phenomenon by which a single word can have multiple meanings. Why do we use the word ‘foot’ in the compound word ‘footnote?’ Why does the word ‘decimation’ derive from the Latin word for ‘ten?’ Will books eventually become extinct? We answer all of these questions and more, all through the lens of polysemy. 

Today's episode looks at the Old English sense of the word wyrd. Originally, it wasn’t an adjective, but a noun that’s commonly translated into Modern English as ‘fate.’ However, this oversimplified translation doesn't tell the word's full story. By comparing and contrasting etymological and cultural evidence, it’s clear that wyrd and "fate" are really not the same thing at all. 

‘Nice’ has gone through more changes than almost any other word in the English language. Over the course of seven centuries, it has been used to mean stupid, promiscuous, elegant, and effeminate, among a handful of other things. In this episode, we try to make sense of its perplexing evolution.

Welcome to Words for Granted! In this debut episode, we'll be looking at how villanus, the Latin word for ‘farmworker,’ became the Modern English word ‘villain.’ From Medieval England farmworkers to comic book antagonists, the meaning of ‘villain’ has changed drastically over time. 

In Ancient Greece, an "idiot", or idiotes, was a "private person", which meant someone who did not hold a political office. In this episode, we explore how the word's modern pejorative connotation emerged. We also look into the word's 19th and early 20th century association with the IQ test.

Though people of extraordinary talents and intellect have always existed, the modern sense of "genius" didn't emerge until the relatively recent 18th century. In Ancient Rome, a "genius" was neither a person nor their brilliant works, but a mythological deity whose function within society evolved over the course of antiquity. 

Most Malay loanwords in English describe the local flora, fauna, and food of Southeast Asia. "Amok", however, is different. Amok, which describes a violent killing spree, is ultimately a Malay word that entered European languages during the era of European colonial expansion. Did Europeans encounter something unique in Southeast Asia that prompted them to adapt this word? 

"Hyperbola" and "ellipse" are geometrical curves, while "hyperbole" and "ellipsis" are rhetorical terms. At face value, it's not clear how the meanings of "hyperbola" and "ellipse" relate to those of "hyperbole" and "ellipsis", but the history of these pairs of cognates are indeed closely intertwined.

To start learning a new language for free with native speakers from around the world, check out the HelloTalk app at: https://go.hellotalk.com/wordsforgranted

The meanings of "parabola" and "parable" have very little to do with one another, yet these words are etymological doublets of a single Greek work, parabole, which meant "a throwing aside". In this episode, we explore how this literal meaning connects to the literary and mathematical developments of this Greek word.

This month's bonus episode explores the syntax of predicate adjectives. Become a member on Patreon.com for to every WFG bonus episode. 

Before Google was the name of one of the world's biggest tech companies, "googol" was an obscure math term that meant "ten to the one hundredth power". Five decades before the founding of Google, the word "googol" emerged spontaneously out of a conversation between an American mathematician and his nephew.

Click here to listen to this month's FREE bonus episode on Patreon.

Rhetoric has a bad reputation. We tend to think of it as a linguistic tool used by polticians and marketing execs to maipulate the masses. While this stereotype is true, rhetoric is more than just snake oil––we use it in apologies, negotions, and love letters, all without even realizing it. In this episode, speech writer and author Guy Doza takes through a wide range of rhetorical techniques and the psychology behind their effectiveness. 

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. For 10% off your first month, click here.

Buy Guy Doza's new book, How to Apologize for Killing a Cat.

The word "average" has anything but an average etymology. If the leading theory is correct, "average" ultimately derives from an Arabic word meaning "defect". In this episode, we explore how this Arabic word made its way into European languages through sea trade and how, given this unlikely origin, its mathematical sense emerged over time. 

English may be spoken by a whopping 1.5 billion ESL speakers around the world, but that doesn't mean it's an "easy" language to learn. For native English speakers, it's easy to take for granted just how irregular the English language is. In this interview episode, I chat with Arika Okrent about her new book, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme and Other Oddities of the English Language. 


Today's episode is brought to you by italki. Go to https://go.italki.com/anniversary-wordsforgranted to claim your $140 of italki credits. 

In many English works printed before the late 19th century, a letter unfamiliar to us today, ſ, is often used in place of the letter S. However, that unfamiliar f-looking letter is actually just an archaic form of the letter S called "long s". In this episode, we explore the origins and decline of this odd orthographical relic. As a coda to our series on lost letters, we also explore the history of the ampersand (&), which up until the late 19th century was often listed as the 27th letter of the alphabet. 

Examples from the episode:

1. Us'd, Clos'd

2. Always puffs, offset, satisfaction; never puffſ, offſet, satiſfaction

3. 17th century: mask, disbelief; 18th century maſk, diſbelief

4. Confuſ-ed, diſ-appearance 

5. Geneſ.

If you've ever encountered the ligatures æ and œ in old texts, you may have wondered: what are they called? Where do they come from? How exactly are they pronounced? Why don't we use them any more? The ligatures ash and ethel are rare in English writing today, but in previous centuries, they were common. (In Old English, the sound we today associate with "short A" was actually not represented by the letter A, but by æ!)

F*ck.  Sh*t. C*ck. These are some of the most profane words in the English language, but what exactly makes them profane? Is there something about profanities that makes them different from ordinary vanilla words? In this interview, I speak with John McWhorter, preeminent linguist and author of Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever. 

Click here to order Nine Nasty Words.

To hear more from John, listen to the Lexicon Valley podcast. 

 

Before the letter W was invented, the rune wynn was borrowed into the Latin AngloSaxon alphabet as a way of representing the /w/ sound. The letter yogh evolved out of Insular G, an Irish variation of the traditional letter G. The phonetic value of yogh varied. It could represent the /y/ sound, the guttural /x/ sound as in the Scottish "loch," and others. Many Modern English words spelled with GH digraph (laugh, though, night, etc.) were once spelled with the letter yogh. 

Interested in taking part in our virtual Latin 101 course this summer taught by Harvard PhD candidate Rebecca Deitsch? Learn more here: https://www.wordsforgranted.com/latin-course

In Modern English, we use the TH digraph to represent the voiced and voiceless dental fricative sounds. However, English previously had two unique letters that did this same job: eth and thorn. In this episode, we look at the origin and decline of eth and thorn in English in addition to some places outside of the English alphabet where these ancient letters have survived. Also, check out these links:

Ticket link to Intelligent Speech 2021: https://www.intelligentspeechconference.com/

The International Phonetic Alphabet interactive chart: https://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/ipa-sounds/ipa-chart-with-sounds/

Ticket link to Intelligent Speech 2021: https://www.intelligentspeechconference.com/

The International Phonetic Alphabet interactive chart:
https://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/ipa-sounds/ipa-chart-with-sounds/

You can't have the English language without the ABC's, right? Wrong. In this overview episode, we look at the history of the alphabet and the many changes it has undergone from its Phoenician origins to today. We also consider the significance of the runic alphabet known as futhorc, the first alphabet used to write English. Two of the lost English letters, thorn and wynn, were directly adapted from this older Germanic script.

Lingthusiasm Episode 52: Writing is a Technology
https://soundcloud.com/lingthusiasm/52-writing-is-a-technology

Runic alphabet (futhorc):
https://omniglot.com/writing/futhorc.htm

‘Pasta’ is first attested in English during the 1800's, which is later than one might expect. However, in prior centuries, a handful of its closely related cognates such as ‘paste,’ ‘pastry,’ ‘pastel,’ and others were borrowed into English. We consider how these words relate historically and etymologically to the beloved Italian food. We also examine the semantic relationship between the words pasta, macaroni, and noodle.

In today's episode, we look at the etymologies of our meal words––not to mention "meal" itself. (As it turns out, "meal" has a long history of usage as a measurement word.) The meanings of our meal words have shifted over time in concert with the standard time at which these meals are eaten. Spoiler: "Dinner" was the original "breakfast," and etymologically, the two words mean almost the same thing. 

To support the show, go to: https://www.patreon.com/wordsforgranted

Instead of criticizing deviations from Standard English as "wrong," what if we celebrated them as expressive lingusitic innovations? In this conversation with Valerie, we take a look at some of the quirky features of English that our language teachers taught us to avoid, and in true Words for Granted fashion, we attempt to understand how and why they emerged. 

To buy Valerie's new book, "Like Literally, Dude," click here.