Hotword Blog
September 15, 2010 12:59 PM Subscribe
Dictionary.com has a blog! It explains, usually in fairly short articles, the etymology of different words, the reason September is the ninth month, and what an "Emmy" is, among others.
I appreciate hippybear's warning, but as a total word-a-phile, I like this blog.
posted by bearwife at 1:17 PM on September 15, 2010
posted by bearwife at 1:17 PM on September 15, 2010
Their links don't link to the places on the web they are talking about; rather they link to the dictionary.com link to that word. For example, in a post about google, clicking on google looks up that work on dictionary.com.
Sort of sneaky. And annoying.
posted by morganannie at 1:19 PM on September 15, 2010
Sort of sneaky. And annoying.
posted by morganannie at 1:19 PM on September 15, 2010
I was initially happy to see this post. Then I was sad to see that the posts on the blog were truncated. Then I was happy to see that when I added it to Google Reader, the full posts were displayed.
posted by jessssse at 1:57 PM on September 15, 2010
posted by jessssse at 1:57 PM on September 15, 2010
I gave up on them after I clicked on the "etymology of different words" link and found the idiotic statement "But one of the terms for finger in Indo-European is penkwe, which also means 'fiveness.'" If you follow their link for "finger," you get this reasonably accurate etymology ("pengke" should be pengkwe):
posted by languagehat at 2:16 PM on September 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
fingerIn other words, *penkwe meant 'five,' not "fiveness" (who has a word for "fiveness"?), and it was not "one of the terms for finger in Indo-European." (In case you're wondering, there is no clear Indo-European term for 'finger'; obviously they had one, but it's no longer recoverable.)
O.E. fingor, from P.Gmc. *fingraz (cf. O.S. fingar, O.N. fingr, Du. vinger, Ger. Finger, Goth. figgrs), with no cognates outside Germanic; perhaps connected with PIE *pengke, the root meaning "five."
posted by languagehat at 2:16 PM on September 15, 2010 [2 favorites]
Or I could go to the OED and actually learn something credible.
posted by Fizz at 2:42 PM on September 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by Fizz at 2:42 PM on September 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
Incidentally, "Fiveness" is the name of my name of my new quartet.
Just to keep the fans wondering where the other guy is
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:34 PM on September 15, 2010
Just to keep the fans wondering where the other guy is
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:34 PM on September 15, 2010
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posted by hippybear at 1:12 PM on September 15, 2010 [1 favorite]