See, etymology isn’t just good for unsolicited trivia.
It’s like a good friend—therapist, even—urging us to touch grass.
To hug a tree! To hold a book!
05.03.2026 17:21
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See, etymology isn’t just good for unsolicited trivia.
It’s like a good friend—therapist, even—urging us to touch grass.
To hug a tree! To hold a book!
The Latin-based CODE and LIBRARY display similar etymological materiality.
CODE comes from the Latin CAUDEX, originally meaning TREE TRUNK.
LIBRARY is rooted in the Latin for book, LIBER, originally referring to the inner tree bark.
The Old English form of BOOK was BOC. Its plural was BEC. Think FOOT/FEET.
The regular -S plural marker, however, eventually prevailed over BEC, yielding BOOKS.
Had it not? We would probably be using a form more like BEECH today.
(I'll leave the discussion of umlaut to the experts.)
Earlier arguments concerning the semantic jump specifically favored the inscription of runes on strips of beech bark.
While the BOOK-BEECH etymology has certainly been challenged, it has regained support, according to the OED.
One for World Book Day: I’ve always loved the materiality of the etymology of BOOK.
The traditional origin for BOOK derives the word from the same Germanic base as BEECH.
For the connection, scholars look to writing tablets made from the tree, which historically once dominated European forests.
Most great English sentences draw on both Germanic and Romance/Latin layers of the language. If you start pulling at the Latin threads, the whole thing comes apart.
Here's the full story of what the purists were fighting about, and why it echoes today:
www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/em-dash-ai...
In researching and writing this post, I relied on two incredible resources, among others.
1) Encyclopædia Iranica
www.iranicaonline.org
2) The Institute for the Study of Ancient Languages
isac.uchicago.edu
The name IRAN is rooted in a "linguistic concept," German scholar of Iranian languages Rüdiger Schmitt explained.
Peoples from ancient Iran and northern India identified themselves by common language.
And English, inter Indo-European alia, is a relative.
mashedradish.com/2026/03/01/i...
Do you recognize 𐭠𐭩𐭥𐭠𐭭 or 𐎠𐎼𐎡𐎹?
They are ancestors to the name IRAN.
I think it's incredible that we know this, and, amidst our present turmoil, I find instruction—maybe even some small consolation—in the reaches of history.
The name IRAN, rooted in an ancient self-designation, has survived the rise and fall of empires past and present.
mashedradish.com/2026/03/01/i...
Good call-out. And Lynch/Badalamenti, having scored “Lost Highway.” They played “Perfect Drug,” which ruled.
NIN. Mind-blowing live show. On top of insane energy and cinematic production, choice cover of Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Americans” and encore (“Hurt,” obvs) decaying into Badalamenti’s “Twin Peaks Theme.”
The toponym treatment continues on the blog, this time digging into the place name histories of MILAN, CORTINA, LOMBARDY, ALPS, and DOLOMITES.
mashedradish.com/2026/02/15/m...
Alas, yes
It is a little icky, innit
At a professional development session just yesterday, the middle-aged presenter used “glazed” (fawn over) and I immediately exclaimed to the person sitting next to me: “Well, that slang term is dead.”
Infamous? Vivek Ramaswamy. Same class.
Also same class: the less assault-y co-founder of GitHub.
Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick
Make IT stop!!!
If it’s any consolation, the kids hate the product.
This is just unspeakable.
One thing that is surreal is having to use a product of the company that laid my dictionary peeps and me all off.
Written in red dry-erase marker on a white board: “The only thing more powerful than hate love,” attributed to Bad Bunny.
One of my 8th graders today sped into class at 7:30am to find her best friend & rave about Bad Bunny’s halftime. She’s Latina, 1st language is Spanish, kept saying how “touching” it was, how happy she was for Bad Bunny. Was moved by his litany of Latin American countries & left this at dismissal:
First, thanks for being gracious with my typos!
Second, it also took me too long to realize the official logo of this Winter Olympics is a stylized 26, not ‘zb,’ which I still have a hard time unseeing.
Winter Olympics word of the week: Stoat. (ht @mashedradish.bsky.social)
fritinancy.substack.com/p/word-of-th...
Borrowed from French, “griddle,” “grill,” and “gridiron” all go back to Latin “craticula”—a little griddle, diminutive of “cratis” (wickerwork). Think “grate over fire for cooking.”
I will say, Matthew McConaughey, that “gridiron” is really just a variant of “griddle.”
The English word for HAWK used to be ...
HAFOC.
Hafoc. Hafoc!
That medial consonant certainly flew the nest.
There's other big sports stuff happening today.
Like, you know, the Seahakws rematching the Patriots in the Super Bowl.
Which prompted me to refresh my 2015 post after the two teams last faced off.
Play back the tape on the etymology of HAWK vs. PATRIOT: mashedradish.com/2026/02/08/h...
English used to pronounce the name of MILAN with the stress on the first syllable.
This is preserved in the spelling of MILLINER.