Can you be gormful, wistless or ert? | LOST POSITIVES
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- Опубліковано 8 лют 2025
- Join word nerds Jess and Rob as they uncover English's unpaired words, lost positives and orphaned negatives. Why can you be "nonchalant" but not "chalant"? If something perfect is "immaculate", what does it mean to be "maculate"? And if you're no longer "exasperated" are you therefore "asperated"? Find out in this edition of Words Unravelled.
👂LISTEN: podfollow.com/...
or search for "Words Unravelled" wherever you get your podcasts.
==LINKS==
Rob's UA-cam channel: / robwords
Jess' Useless Etymology blog: uselessetymolo...
Rob on X: x.com/robwordsyt
Jess on TikTok: tiktok.com/@jesszafarris
Thanks to Martyn Williams for the music and continued support.
#etymology #wordfacts #English
Rob here with a warning not to come to me for medical advice! Macular degeneration is so called because it effects part of the retina called the 'macula'. Macula gets its name from the Latin for a spot or a blemish/stain (because it's a little dot). So I got the etymology right, but not the physiology. 👀
And Jess here noting that I was incorrect when I said that "nocent" is from a root meaning "knowing" or "to know." Rather, as some commenters have noted, it's from the Latin nocere "to harm." That's what I get for riffing!
In other words, Rob, your description of the macula was... peccable!
@@annieoakley3516 Getting your maculae pecked is definitely to be avoided.
"You're so innocent. Bless your heart."
😮
I love how two experts can get this wrong. Always tells us to check our sources more than our memory.
When I was about 15 I came across this sentence. "The army was underfed." It threw me. Un-derfed. Is there a word 'derfed?' I asked my father what it meant. He also had no idea. A few minutes later he said "How about under-fed." We had a good laugh.
Like "misled". Is that "mizzled"?
albeit and nevertheless (and nonetheless) are weird words like this too haha, as if they might be al- | bight and ne- | verthe-less, and no- | nethe-less
used to read "embed" as if it were like "combed"
In german, darf is the first- person word for may/allowed. So, I looked at your comment and thought maybe its 'unallowed' 😂
Unionized: un-ionized or union-ized
Having both of you bouncing off each other and showing excitement about your mutual revelations is far more entertaining than a single entomologist struggling to have others share his or her passion for words. It’s fun listening to two people from very different backgrounds united in their interest in the origins and usage of English language words.
Etymologist. An entomologist studies insects.
malapropism!
Obviously I meant to write etymologist - either a ‘bug’ in my auto-correct spell check, or I’m going senile (my money is on the later!).
@@mbloy613 Why not both? The thought is not exactly strange to me.
@@mbloy613 if you study that bug will you become an entomologist?
With regard to “inept”, “adept” is a good opposite.
Not really. "ineptus" in latin meant "not appropriate", from the positive "aptus" = Appropriate (the negative prefix "in" often chanced the first voyel of the following root.) "Adept" is from "adipiscor" = I reach something: "adeptus" is someone who reaches a place, or who obtains something, or who joins a group.
@@nicolettabiardi7128 Sorry Nicoletta, I think you're wrong here. From my schoolboy latin I think adeptus was one who has atttained something and adept seems like a good antonym for inept
Why skip over just 'apt'?
A+ episode. I enjoy this topic too much! I heard this on NPR years ago and always remembered how much I loved it. It's from The New Yorker, July 25, 1994, by Jack Winter. "How I Met My Wife." It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate.
I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner. She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way.
I wanted desperately to meet her, but I knew I'd have to make bones about it since I was travelling cognito. Beknownst to me, the hostess, whom I could see both hide and hair of, was very proper, so it would be skin off my nose if anything bad happened. And even though I had only swerving loyalty to her, my manners couldn't be peccable. Only toward and heard-of behavior would do.
Fortunately, the embarrassment that my maculate appearance might cause was evitable. There were two ways about it, but the chances that someone as flappable as I would be ept enough to become persona grata or a sung hero were slim. I was, after all, something to sneeze at, someone you could easily hold a candle to, someone who usually aroused bridled passion.
So I decided not to risk it. But then, all at once, for some apparent reason, she looked in my direction and smiled in a way that I could make heads and tails of.
I was plussed. It was concerting to see that she was communicado, and it nerved me that she was interested in a pareil like me, sight seen. Normally, I had a domitable spirit, but, being corrigible, I felt capacitated -- as if this were something I was great shakes at -- and forgot that I had succeeded in situations like this only a told number of times. So, after a terminable delay, I acted with mitigated gall and made my way through the ruly crowd with strong givings.
Nevertheless, since this was all new hat to me and I had no time to prepare a promptu speech, I was petuous. Wanting to make only called-for remarks, I started talking about the hors d'oeuvres, trying to abuse her of the notion that I was sipid, and perhaps even bunk a few myths about myself.
She responded well, and I was mayed that she considered me a savory character who was up to some good. She told me who she was. "What a perfect nomer," I said, advertently. The conversation become more and more choate, and we spoke at length to much avail. But I was defatigable, so I had to leave at a godly hour. I asked if she wanted to come with me. To my delight, she was committal. We left the party together and have been together ever since. I have given her my love, and she has requited it.
THIS is AMAZING! Thanks so much for sharing it! Gotta warn though that I'm definitely stealing!
@@maryloumawson6006 By all means! I stole it from NPR and share it with whoever wants to nerd out with me.
In Scotland we can still hear the opposite of uncouth, where people can be described as 'couthy', i.e. warm, frfiendly, polite, welcoming etc.
I would consider "inept" to be unskilled, but "inapt" to be inappropriate to the situation. So an inept writer might make an inapt simile.
Since you brought Countdown's always magnificent Susie Dent into this discussion of missing words, I cannot let pass the opportunity to mention the instance on Qi with Sandi Toksvig asking the panelists if they knew about just such "orphaned negative" words. She brought up "ineffable" and "effable" and Sara Pascoe said that she had heard women use that lost word in phrases such as, "he's got nice trousers on today; he's totally effable."
Totally brilliant, Sara.
Sara's a hoot!
If I heard someone saying effable, I would think they were swearing! F-able!
Now I've learned something. 😊
14:37 As the great Douglas Adams put it, "Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all."
Jess, your anecdote was similar to my experience as a child; I would ask my dad a random question, as children do, and if he didn’t know the answer he would tell me to look it up. Fortunately, he bought a collection of encyclopedias for us. But, if that wasn’t enough, there was a library two blocks away which I explored constantly. I feel very fortunate for my Dads honesty and not just making up an answer to appease me. I learned far more looking things up myself and getting lost through a rabbit hole of knowledge.
Rob, Jess, I really love this series, please keep going.
That's lovely. Thank you for sharing! - JZ
When I told my youngest daughter to “look it up” she replied “that’s what we have you for”
Your Dad deserves a pat on the back!
Jess’s teacher: “Why would you choose to be ignorant?! … Be norant!” 😅
Rob and Jess, I find your conversations fascinating. More importantly, I have a son, now 45, who has been deaf since he was 3-1/2 years old. While most of his daily life function in ASL (American Sign Language), we luckily provided him with CC TV (before it was commonly available) and a TDD telephone early on so his English skills are excellent. I am thinking of providing him the link to your podcasts as I suspect he will find them fascinating.
That's wonderful, George! We hope he enjoys the show! We do take time to edit up the closed captions because the terms from various languages and stages of English can get tricky-so hopefully he finds it accessible as well.
Rob's comment about the pronunciation of "Ruths" reminds me of Tolkien's use of "dwarves" instead of the correct "dwarfs". As a philologist, he was allegedly embarrassed by this apparent mistake, but later said he did it to deliberately make The Hobbit sound more ancient. (His plural has, of course, become more common today.)
There's a story (perhaps apocryphal) that before writing about Middle Earth, Prof. Tolkien helped to edit the Oxford English Dictionary. When his publisher pointed out that the correct plural for "dwarf" is "dwarfs", according to the OED, he replied with something along the lines of "I wrote the OED, so shut up."
I'm reminded that The elder Blackett, real name Ruth, in Swallows And Amazons is known as Nancy instead, because "pirates are ruthless."
My favorite is discombobulate. In the airport in Milwaukee Wisconsin, there is a “recombobulation station” just after the security checkpoint. Love it
I am "whelmed" by this podcast. It's so calming.
As a word geek, and dictionary collector, I am really enjoying this channel. Not boring for me! 🤣🤣🤣
Nope. It’s NEVER boring!
Something can EXplode. Something else can IMplode.
Does that mean I am in a constant state of "ploding"?
"Plosive" is an actual word...an overly plosive "P" will cause you to make a microphone boom loudly and possibly get spat on as well...
I plood through another quiet day in my lounge wear, ever ready for action.
@@clareomarfran That brought back memories of one of the very first and very pixelated computer games.
No
I just thought of a way to make the traditional English tea with a dash of milk more trendy: rebrand it as tea macchiato.
- So what does inert mean?
- Well, it means that it's not ... ert
- It wouldn't ert a fly.
- Yes Minister, The Greasy Pole, BBC, 1981.
I was thinking maybe it was from Thin Blue Line. I'll never forget that time Constable Goody thought the ER on Buckingham Palace's gate was pronounced as "errr." He said, "You know... 'er what lives in the palace!" As an American who saw that episode just before my first UK visit, it's all I could think about seeing the emblem everywhere!
Having the ability to look up definitions is why I love reading on e-books so much.
Ruthless: “I wonder where Ruth is?”
Firesign Theater
The Further Adventures of Nick Danger: Third Eye
Noice
@@dwombat2759 You are CORRECT! Absolutely CORRECT, my dear Wombat!
Right here
My sister is Ruth. However she is far from being Ruthless! 😂
Or the misogynists Bible.
I love watching Jess and Rob, each an expert in his/her field, as they learn from each other What a happy show!
Macular degeneration is not staining of the vision, it is the degeneration of the macula, a yellow spot that contains a high concentration of photo receptors. Thus to be maculate is not necessarily bad. Dalmations are born immaculate but later develop their spots.
Staining not staying
@@rechmbrsAnd the etymology of "macula" is from Latin "stain"
This is true, but Rob’s point is slightly off. @AutoReport1 is pointing out that Rob is misunderstanding the meaning of macular degeneration.
The full name of the macula is macula lutea, yellow stain. According to the wikipedia article, the yellowness of the macula is not readily visible in a living eye because the red of blood overpowers it, but after death or surgical removal of an eye, the yellow color becomes visible.
Well, flabber my gast! As a long-time language nerd, I'd never made the connection between the English "disgust" and the Spanish "gustar" (meaning "to please")
LOL - I'd just made the mental leap from "maculate" to "macchiato" when Rob brought it up - in fact, I'd paused the video to comment that very thing.
21:05 - a pedantic screech at Jess saying "for you and I"!
Personally, I’m fiberglassted!
Me gusto mucho.
@@papamouse5231 It's gusta not gusto.
@@nickmiller76 Gracias. I'm still learning.
My favorite is "pessimal" as the opposite of "optimal" which isn't exactly lost, but far less often used
This is one of my new pleasures. Every time it pops up I get a warm happy feeling!
Love your work both of you. I am a particularly pedantic word nerd. This blends in with my other obsession which is grammar. So I couldn’t help noticing that Jess said “you and I” at 21:07 when she should have said “you and me” - sorry, I can’t help myself!
I enjoy your podcasts very much, but this one came at me from a different direction. When Jess said that a southern thing could be a "complisult" I spit my coffee across the room! My wife is southern and I learned this one the hard way, from her family the first time we met. So keep doing what you do, bless y'alls hearts! 😉 Truely love what you do!
Bless your heart! 🥰😉 - JZ
Yes, a southerner here and I also loved the word "complisult." My grandmother (from the hills of northeast Georgia) would say, "well, it tried." She meant that he/she/they tried to do something and it didn't work out, but it can be understood to be more of an insult depending on the tone of voice and extremity of the southern accent.
When you started this podcast with the word "disgusted", it reminded me that our favourite cuss word here in Mindanao Cebuano (usually called "Bisaya" here) is "Pastilan". It's not easily translatable into English, but the Cebuano to English dictionary site that I use simply says "Expression of disgust". If I hit myself with something, bump my head, or something I'm doing goes wrong, I'll say "Pastilan!" It can be, and often is, intensified by adding the word "gayud/gyud" which means "really/a lot". If you are really really really disgusted about something, you add the word "Sus/Sos" to the phrase. That's a contraction of "HesusMariJosep"... yes, in a very Catholic country, calling on the Holy Family. I use "Pastilan/Pastilan gyud" everywhere that in Australia I'd resort to the "F word".
You two are absolutely delightful to watch.
These vids (and their comment sections) are an awful lot of fun.
Awless ;)
You two are fast becoming my favourite podcast on the Internet. Thanks for the content.
To hear how many perfectly reasonable, succinct, and useful words just stopped getting used, except in frozen formations and negatives, certainly does dislodge a few gruntles from me. Grrml, gromble, grr.
My new favorite podcast. Until now I have only known ravelled words, thank you; each episode leaves me a little more combobulated.
A famous one, that looks like this but isn't actually, is "inflammable", which - surprisingly - just means "flammable".
Similarly "inebriated" and the rarer "ebriated" both mean drunk.
"Inflammable" is the original word. "Flammable" is a back formation from it. Notice that a doctor diagnoses an inflammation, not a flammation, and a demagogue might make an inflammatory speech, but not a flammatory one.
@@hadz8671 In french, we have the noun "ébriété" (ebriaty) to describe, in a formal way, the state of being drunk. But we don't have the negative form, or the verb neither.
Flammable was invented because there was some confusion with some people that inflammable meant "not flammable" vs. its actual meaning of "able to be inflamed". This confusion was deemed absolutely unacceptable because of the extreme risk to the safety of persons or property should that mixup occur and so flammable was born.
Now that flammable exists and is the much more common word there's even more room for confusion but because inflammable is never used in situations where any misunderstanding might present a safety issue it's not a problem in real life. Mostly it just confuses people when reading old literature.
Because flammable is almost always the word used now, inflammable is well on its way to dying out.
@@pjl22222 Ages ago, I enjoyed reading Jean Aitchison's "Language Change: Progress or Decay?" She discusses topics like this. It's a fascinating and witty book.
I've been watching this channel since the beginning and each episode is better than the one before. You are both great.
I expected a delightful video, and I was appointed!
It wasn’t licious indeed
Could it be delightless?
By whom?
Being a Southerner, you not only know about innocent being used negatively, but my all time favorite, "Bless your heart," which can have a multitude of connotations depending not only on context but also tonal inflections.
Listening to this, I was reminded of some of L. Frank Baum's silliness in his short story "Ozma and the Little Wizard." It features three imps named Olite, Udent, and Ertinent. It went right over my head when I was a kid; I just accepted them as strange fantasy names. The penny didn't drop until I was an adult.
@karenSDR. It took me a while to figure it out. I'mp not too sharp.
Rob and Jess, you are the best. The whole thing with immaculate, macular degeneration and macchiato was amazing! One of the best parts of my day
We have truthful but not ruthful, but we have ruthless and not truthless. 😊
Oh my gosh Roband Jess I just love this series of UA-cam videos. I feel like I am just somewhat of a word geek myself and Itook two years of Latin in high school and one year of French in high school and I especially like the various variants of words that you have unraveled in such an energetic, thorough 😊👌🏻 and ebullient way in this video!
I've been a word nerd for the longest time, and to see you both being so giddy about words happies my brain!
If there were a happy-hunting-ground in the sky after death, my version would definitely have you two in it and I would spend eons enjoying your enthusiasm for etymology. I rarely learn anything new about individual words in our family of Indo-European languages (I too have been down many a metaphorical rabbit hole in my time) but your videos have on occasion supplemented my knowledge as well as consistently delighting me. Thank you both so much.
Mu wife and I do say "Wieldy" for something that's easy to use - like a well-designed garden tool.
@6:12 chalant reminded me of the word of the Pokémon's name Chandelure. It looks like chandelier, which I imagine would have held candles back before lightbulbs.
Yep, "chandelle" is the French word for candle. A "chandelier" is a candlestick; "Chandeleur" is Candlemas, a Roman Catholic holiday about candles.
The Latin word for candle comes from "to shine". I don't think it has a direct link to Chaloir because this one comes from the Latin word for heat. I mean heat and shine are probably related in some way but it probably goes back millennia 😅
"Why would you choose to be ignorant?" Love it! Does it follow that one should endeavour to be 'gnorant' instead?
The root is Greek "gnosis", wisdom. So "gnorant" could exist, it would be a delightful word!
You talked about disgusted & "gusted", but an opposite of disgusting (sense of distasteful) might be gustatory (tasteful).
I also thought of progress & congress, but is there just "gress"? Conspire & respire, but spire?
Peat from repeat?, Plete from replete or complete? You should do a Part 2 of Lost Positives / Orphans, or maybe a whole podcast on prefixes & suffixes. This whole series is so fun.
Excellent podcast. Great to have two bouncing off each other. Reminder to Jess that it's "good for you and me" rather than "good for you and I".
"Apt:inept" goes back to Old Latin when the stress was on the first syllable. The 'a' in what would have been "inaptus" was unstressed, so it turned into "ineptus", and stayed that way when the stress shifted to being counted from the end (in this word "ep" was stressed) in Classical Latin.
20:12 there's a story by isaac asimov called "the evitable conflict", although it is probably just a counterpart to inevitable.
In France, the adjective 'évitable' (avoidable) is as commonly used as his counterpart 'inévitable'.
@@Anne-Enez Thanks for that. Those of us with only school French wouldn't know.
@@hamishstewart5188 Thanks. You're welcome! Merci, de rien!
I have always loved looking up new words. As a child I used to read a lot of books lying in bed and there was a pocket dictionary permanently on the shelf above my bed so I could look up new words straight away!
When you've moved the fourth time and you find out that the same unnecessary knickknack is still with you you can start to call it a posable thing. I mean it clearly was not disposable.
English is not my native language, but as a (Brazilian) Portuguese speaker, Latin roots come easily to mind. "Innocent" is derived from the present participle (something like the "ing" form of English verbs) of Latin "nocere" ("nocens"), meaning to hurt, to harm. The "non-negative" form of the word in modern English would be "noxious", also derived from the same "noc-" root, but in adjective form ("noxius")
I'm just loving this 'joining of the forces' and I find the history and hidden meaning of words to be intriguing. Always loved Rob's 'casts and sadly never came across Jess before. I'm thoroughly enjoying seeing her on my computer - takes my breath away.
I jess adore Jess.
Re "nonchalant", I've been looking up French resources that point to nonchalant being first mentioned in the 13th century in French texts. It comes from the verb nonchaloir (to be unconcerned or even negligent). That in turn comes from chaloir which ultimately goes back to an impersonal verb "chielt" recorded in a 9th century manuscript. The verb comes from the intransitive Latin "calere" (to be hot, passionate or driven, pronounced KA-leh-reh) in the figurative sense of to be worried as used by Plautus and Cicero.
So I am dubious about the word nonchalant having been coined in English first.
The -th in English represents a measurable quality, like health, wealth, length, width, breadth, depth, etc... So rue in Old English carried the meaning of sorrow, emotional distress, regret, and repentence, but in Old Norse it shared the noun root with that which is measured by how much emotional pain it causes you. So being ruthless means that you have no emotional pain from something, aka don't care about your actions.
Small correction: Ruth is a character in the bible, from the Book of Ruth. Re'ut is a different word, meaning friendship. They are unrelated etymologically. The confusio1n, as far as I can tell, comes from a specific translation of the book from Hebrew to Aramaic, where Ruth was translated as Re'ut, probably to underline the friendliness and loyalty of the character Ruth.
Love the podcast! It's the highlight of my day 😊
Brilliant thank you! So interesting and brain stimulating, even for a french person speaking English as second language. Should be because talking of one language is talking of all languages.
I just want to stress that the french word nonchalant comes from chalant that means client, someone who could buy something. Nonchalant thus means not interested, not paying attention. For me it has nothing to do with chaleur.
I think you are half right: for me too (also French L1) chaland is a customer, but notice the d instead of the t. I looked it up and chaland seems to be descended from chaloir. It figures, it sounds like an old word anyway! Nobody uses it in my part of the world
@@allthe1 Apparently, chalant et chaland can be two spellings for the same word. Indeed derived from the verb "chaloir" (old french for to matter), meaning interested or customer, and linked to the related words "achalander" (to supply a shop), "chalandise" (group of customers), and "nonchalant" (not interested, unconcerned). The verb chaloir is also still used in the old french expression "peu me chaut" meaning I don't care. And a "chaland" is also a flat boat used to transport goods on rivers or shallow waters.
Haddywist in Dutch would have been short for 'had ik dat wist' or 'had ik dat geweten' ( if I had only known). Wist is the singular past tense of weten ( to know) that seems the same as in wisdom.
So wistdom
This is wonderful, thank you! - JZ
Another such word is "uproar". Presumably a sudden and unexpected silence would be a downroar.
There is no "roar" in "uproar". It's related to "rear" as in "rear up".
Nonroar?
I think the opposite of "nonroar" would have to be "roar".
She said "term of phrase" at 19:26! Yall need to go back in time and put that in the eggcorn episode. I didn't even know that one existed! Now to rewind and listen to what she was actually saying when that happened...
Huh, I had to double check -- you're right! That was a slip of the tongue rather than ignorance of the idiom. Seems I need to do some vocal exercises before these pods. :) - JZ
I remember a Strong Bad E-mail where he asked himself if something could be just plain couth.
Regarding "inevitable", I was intrigued to discover how that links to "unavoidable" as I was studying Portuguese. In Portuguese, "to avoid" is "evitar", and at first, that made me think of "evade". A bit of etymological searching later, and I confirmed the connection. Inevitable is un-evade-able is unavoidable.
It is really crazy how much OE is still intelligible with modern German: rue = Reue, wist = Wissen.
On an unrelated note, I'm just gonna say it: She is adorable. There, I said it.
They're both adorable. They are the perfect storm of mutual adorability.
I would love to see an episode that explores the origins of various idioms like "bought the farm" or "under the weather " or "by the skin of your teeth". There are thousands of these and I would love to know the origins of some.
Jess is rapidly becoming my UA-cam crush.
Not only is she both smart and beautiful… but that moment of absolute joy when “macchiato” came up… that totally got me.
@oliverstjohn2406 Yes, Jess is so cute, it's painful! ("in a good way", as Americans like to add)...
As a italian native speaker it is both cute and a little frustrating to see you discover what appear to be obvious things about latin derivatives with such grandiosity
I feel the same as a french speaker (and a bit of italian also). As Rob and Jess often go straight to the latin etymology, the knowledge of italian, in particular, should be very helpful. An idea for a third latin word nerd to join them?
Endful, as opposed to endless, is something I thought of when having a discussion about early video games.
Fascinating! I've been watching your videos for the past few hours, because I just couldn't stop after finding the most recent one. I actually knew some of Rob's videos about the German language. (I'm not a native English speaker, had some English lessons in school and by ways of the internet learned the language over the past 25 years or so)
But why am I commenting on a 2 months old podcast? Well I was totally surprised when Jess brought up the term "haddywyt", which was totally unknown to me before that. However, it sounded to me like the exact phrase I'd use to describe the concept of that expression. In the local dialect we would say: "Hätt' i' g'wißt.." (Hätte ich gewußt...) [Had I known...] to start expressing regrets for our actions. I could be totally wrong, but that word seems to resemble a contraction of that phrase (or a similar one), it is hard to imagine, that it's not related.
It certainly wouldn't be the only case of such a coincidence, but it was so surprisingly obvious to me, that I couldn't leave it unmentioned without later saying: "Haddywyst nobody else noticed, I would have pointed it out."
- Nonchalant is a participle of the old Verb "Chaloir" (to be worry or concerned with or by something) so nonchalant is someone who doesn't care by what surrounds him, someone not excited (not heated).
- Chalant (or chaland) has another meaning, it's a client or customer doing his shoppings in the same store. This word nowadays is used only in economy and retail business. It means literally "heated" clients attracted by the marchandise exposed in the store.
cool.
;-)
Rob, you may want to look at macula degeneration again. It's not about the eyesight being spotty. Macula is a term in anatomy. It describes the spot at the center of the retina, where all the sensor cells are cones, good for color reception (as opposed to a mix of cones and rods in the rest of the retina). This spot has a slightly different color when looking at the eye background. It was therefore called the 'macula', the mark.
Macula degeneration refers to receptor cells in the center of your field of vision dying. The macula degenerates.
Unrelated: As you speak German: you may have come across "Makel", and "makellos".
The full name of the macula is macula lutea, yellow stain. According to the wikipedia article, the yellowness of the macula is not readily visible in a living eye because the red of blood overpowers it, but after death or surgical removal of an eye, the yellow color becomes visible.
I love these videos and all things etymology. I have macular dystrophy and didn't know it meant that my sight is stained. But it makes so much sense as I see a lot of spots and specks and flashing lights so it is stained! Thanks for all the learnings
I'm probably about to say something already known, but the 'gust' part of 'disgust', or at least the latin ancestor verb 'gusto' does find its way into English in 'gustation' and even in the Italian borrowing 'gusto' (as in 'to do something with gusto').
... a gust of wind
@@francespettigrew9646I always thought about that, something that is disgusting takes your gust (ie, wind, breath) away...
Regarding "whelming", it looks like it was a word in at least 1836, since it appears in the lyrics of a hymn composed in that year.
13:31 As someone with intimate familiarity with macular degeneration, it doesn't mean that. I'm sure there's an etymological link, but it's not about your vision being stained. There is a part of the eye called the macula, it's in the retina, the region of light sensing cells in the back of the eye, and the macula is the most densely populated part pod that region
@mythai05 Ah, so I see. Thank you. I'm so used to pinned comments being full of nothing but sponsor links that I've piglet up a hair of immediately scrolling past them. Poly just found the channel today, so I hadn't broken out of my knee jerk reaction yet. Thank you.
I love your videos. I have been diving down the linguistics phraseology rabbit hole for years. I just discovered the Greek word used to describe “Heaven “ in the early Bible was synonymous with the Greek God of the sky. Kind of ironic, I thought.
Learnt so much. As a speaker of English as second language I always assumed Ruth means mercy and Ruthless is merciless.
Today at work someone used the word moralising as the opposite of demoralising, which reminded me to watch this video!
I remember playing a golf video game a couple of decades ago and every time you messed up a shot, your opponent would come out with some sarcastic comment. The one that stuck with me was missing a short putt and being told "Nonchalant putts count the same as chalant putts."
I'd always understood that 'nocent' meant 'harmful' or 'causing harm' , and an online search has confirmed this. As far as I know, 'nocent', is related to 'noxious' (from Latin 'nocere', to harm) rather than Greek-derived words like 'gnosis' (''knowledge' or 'knowing').
from "My Hope Is Built On Nothing Less" by Robert Critchley "His oath, his covenant, his blood Supports me in the 'whelming flood". Through, the apostrophe seems to imply this to be a shortening of overwhelming.
Really glad I found your channel. I study last names, and etymology is very tied to that. I also look for the root of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew words. Knowing the root adds so much flavor to the word. But I don't like 'ents'.
Love this new format from you guys. I also have to say, in no way detracting from her intellect and ability, that I find Jess’ smile totally captivating. I really enjoy watching you guys discuss back and forth. Lots more please!
Brilliant episode! I thoroughly enjoyed watching you two "word nerds" - which is by no means meant as a disparaging term. 😁
Thanks for another good post. As it happens, I was just wondering about “aspersions” and why the only thing we do with them is to cast them.
Hello, fellow language lovers! I absolutely adore your videos! BUT - Jess, Jess, Jess!! „for you and I“?! After teaching English for almost (a very long time), this is perhaps my pet peeve number 1! 😊 But not being innocent (in the naive sense - I am not guilty of this error), I fear I‘m on the losing side of this battle and apparently have been for centuries.
"Evitable" (what is possible to avoid), is plain latin from e(x)vitare (to keep away from, to avoid). Old form was "éviter à" (to avoid AT something) still used in some expressions and with some reminiscences in aged patois speakers. (from Dictionnaire Historique de la Langue Française)
"Innocent" in Québec French especially (in France French it sounds archaic but understandable) can be used to mean "not knowing the danger you're in" especially to a child who does something bad. "Innocence" the noun of this adjective in French is still used to mean naive, not knowing things, and ultimately: childish.
I have heard, and used, unwieldly to mean something awkward to handle or use, but not unwieldy.
Now thatv you've started exploring missing negatives/opposites, I suppose the next step would be words that are their own opposites? Dust - to add dust [dust for fingerprints] and remove dust - for starters.
Never mind words that *seem* to be opposites but mean the same: inflammable and flammable.
(The in- here is the preposition, not the negation particle.)
I love these words. Others are ravel, cleave, and oversight. I once read a mystery novel in which the protagonist, an art expert, in a thread completely irrelevant to the plot line, collected six or eight of these words for his own amusement as he proceeded to unravel the mystery. I cannot for the life of me recall the name or author. I'd love to re-read that one.
Contranyms! Love 'em. - JZ
Aspersion is also part of the Mass. The priest walks down the aisle throwing holy water on everyone with something called an aspergillum. So "casting aspersion" really is negative, it is symbolically trying to bless or even re-baptise someone, to drive out a demon. The indication you need to do so implies they have fallen deeply into error. (Bless their hearts!).
The counterpart would actually be dispersion, no? Aspersion is what you do to the person, (you spread stuff toward them) but dispersion is what you do to the water in the process (you spread it around).
Two words that occur to me that might pique your interest are "ingrate" and "miscreant".
If an ingrate is someone who is not grateful, does that mean someone who IS grateful is a grate? And would an ingrate be grateless?
I’m loving this podcast! I heard another orphan word: haught. As in, what someone who is haughty has a lot of.
high cockalorum
On "gruntled": In southern Germany / Austria, somebody may be called "Grantler" (pronounced like "gruntler") who usually is rather disgruntled and tends to complain about everything.
These videos are so awesome! My mind unravels 😊
You unravel words, but can something ravelled? A new rope might be well ravelled, but could be unravelled were it picked apart. This was another wonderful episode. I would love to see more about these kinds of words.
Actually 'ravelled' is used to describe balls of wool / yarn that are intact and not unravelled.
@@andeeanko7079 I did not know that. Thanks for the info!
Loving your videos guys!
Just delightful.
When I studied English, my teacher taught me that "nonchalantly" had a synonym: "unobtrusively".
Yet, I have never seen "obtrusively" as a word.
"Innocent" originated from the Latin verb "nocere", i.e. to harm. See the word "innocuous". It comes from the same verb.
I would use obtrusive(ly) as meaning deliberately and probably offensively obvious.
"He obtrusively counted the conents of his wallet"