Words for Granted - An etymology and linguistics podcast

In the pre-modern world, philosophy referred to all forms of intellectual knowledge. Today, the discipline of philosophy is just one aspect of the traditional field of philosophia , or 'love of knowledge.'

The pronoun 'they' was borrowed into English from Old Norse. Pronouns within a language tend to be conservative over time, so this borrowing of a foreign pronoun into English is a bit unusual. In today's episode, we explore the entire history of "they," from its roots as a Proto-Germanic demonstrative adjective to its modern usage as a singular, gender-neutral pronoun in English.

Subjectification is a unique linguistic process by which a word evolves to reflect the subjective viewpoint of the speaker using it. For example, the word 'very' used to mean 'true,' but over time, it lost its objectivity and merely became a way of emphasizing subjectivity. In this episode, we explore this process in a broad sense and look at a few more examples.  Further reading: https://web.stan...

The word 'the' is the sole definite article in the English language. It's also the most common word in our language. However, for such a grammatically fundamental word, its history isn't as straightforward as one might think. Old English had a whopping twenty different forms of the definite article, all of which collapsed into the single, versatile word 'the' by the time of Modern English. We disc...

In this conversation, Steve and I discuss the linguistic influence of the King James Bible and some common English idioms that have Biblical etymologies. 

Adverbs ending in the -ly suffix are all contractions hiding in plain sight. -ly is cognate with the word 'like,' and indeed, it literally means … 'like.' Sadly is literally sad- like . Madly is literally mad- like . Amazingly, both 'like' and '-ly' derive from a root word meaning 'body or corpse.' Over the course of this episode, we try to make sense of this semantic evolution.

To be or not to be? Well, if you're conjugating the verb, you're most likely using a form that does not sound like 'to be.' 'To be' is the most irregular verb in the English language, and in today's episode, we explore why this is the case.

Grammar is one of the defining features of language. In today's episode, we look at some of the fundamentals of grammar in general, and then take a brief tour through the historical evolution of English grammar itself. Part 1 in a five-part series. 

Today's episode serves as an epilogue to the series on Biblical etymology. Secular means 'unaffiliated with religion,' but originally, it was a word used to describe the measurement of long spans of time. Roughly equivalent to a century, the saeculum , as it was known in Ancient Rome, was celebrated with pagan rituals (ironic), theater, and games. Over the course of the episode, we trace the devel...

The word 'God' is not derived from the original Biblical texts. Rather, it's a term from Germanic paganism that was adapted to Christianity. In the original Hebrew of the Old Testament, God is called by many names, and these diverse titles don't necessarily translate clearly into English. In today's episode, we dissect a handful of Hebrew terms for God that are used in the original Hebrew of the B...

In the Bible, the word Hell is a common English translation of three Greek and Hebrew words, but the meanings of those words hardly resemble Hell as we know it today. In addition to the etymology of 'hell' itself, this episode explores the doctrinal implications of those original Biblical terms.

The letter J is a direct descendent of the letter I. Based on their dissimilar sounds, it's an unlikely genetic connection, and today's story explores how this development took place. To keep the theme of Biblical etymology going, we examine this development through the evolution of the name Jesus.

Greek gods. Golden Age heroes. Our conscience. Guardian angels. Evil spirits. All of these things and more were once associated with the word daimon , the Ancient Greek predecessor of the Modern English 'demon.' Originally a neutral term that did not imply good or bad, today's episode looks at how this pagan Greek term became the embodiment of evil spirits.

On average, the word 'church' appears in English bibles 115 times. However, kuriakon , the word from which 'church' derives, only appears in the original Greek text twice, and its usage has nothing to do with a place of worship. The word 'church' is a translation of ekklesia , a different Greek word meaning 'assembly.' In this episode, we examine the long and complex history of how the translation...

Up until Modern English, the English language distinguished between its singular and plural second-person pronouns. Thou was the singular, and ye was the plural. Today, these have been replaced by a single pronoun, 'you.' Thou and ye are common Biblical pronouns in English, but there's more to their usage in the Bible than just preserving an old linguistic tradition. In today's episode, we examine...

Today's episode serves as an introduction to an extended series on Biblical etymology. In it, we discuss the difficulties of translating ancient texts--particularly holy texts--into modern languages. Over the course of this series, we'll gain insight into the overall development and evolution of Judaism and Christianity from the unlikely perspective of etymology. 

When compared to the other numbers between ten and twenty, the words for eleven and twelve stick out like a sore thumb. If they followed the construction of the rest of the teen numbers, they'd be called one-teen and two-teen, but of course, this isn't the case.

The emergence of the words algebra and algorithm can be traced back to the life of one man, an Arabic mathematician named Al-Kworizmi. Today's episode looks at the history of Al-Kworizmi's works and their impact on the Western world, particularly on European languages.      

Chemistry as we know it is a rational science. However, both the word chemistry and the science of chemistry itself evolved out of the pre-scientific practice of alchemy. In today's episode, we look at the origins of alchemy, a few theories regarding its etymology, and how medieval Arabic plays into Europe's inheritance of this word. Finally, we consider the circumstances under which alchemy becam...

Unlike most Arabic loanwords, the word serendipity was not borrowed from a foreign language, but invented by an eighteenth century Englishman. It's based on Serendip, an old Arabic word for the nation of Sri Lanka, and was inspired by an Italian folk tale originally composed in Persian. The odd coinage of 'serendipity' is an international story that spans many cultures, languages, and time periods...

Today's episode serves as an intro to a series on Arabic loanwords in English. As a Semitic language, Arabic is very foreign to English. We take a look at some of the basic linguistic and cultural features of Arabic that make it stand apart from the rest of the languages discussed on this podcast thus far. 

At last, the finale in the Words for Granted series on days of the week! 'Saturday' comes from a root that literally means 'day of Saturn.' Unlike the rest of the English names for the days of the week, it's a direct etymological descendent of the original Latin word for Saturday. And Sunday—you guessed it—literally means 'day of the sun.' We also compare and contrast these English names with thei...

Part four of the days of the week miniseries! This time, we investigate Thursday and Friday, or Thor's Day and Frigg's Day. Like the other days of the week discussed thus far, the names 'Thursday' and 'Friday' are loan translations of the Latin names for the days of the week.  

In Old English, the word for Wednesday was Wodnesdaeg , which literally meant 'Woden's day.' It comes from a loan translation of the Latin dies mercurii , which literally meant 'day of Mercury' (Woden was the Germanic god associated with the Roman god Mercury). This much is for certain. But how did the O in Wodnesdaeg shift to the E in 'Wednesday?'

In today's episode, we begin our investigation of the etymologies of each day of the week. Both Monday and Tuesday are ultimately loan translations of the Latin words dies lunae (Luna's day) and dies martis (Mars's day). Luna, the Roman moon goddess, was identified with Mani, the Germanic moon god; Mars, the Roman god of war, was identified with Tiw, the chief deity in the original Germanic panthe...