Hotword Blog

September 15, 2010 12:59 PM

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.
posted by lauratheexplorer (7 comments total)

After reading this FPP from a couple of months ago, I don't use Dictionary.com for anything, ever.
posted by hippybear at 1:12 PM on September 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

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

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

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

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 pengk^we):

finger
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."

In 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.)
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]

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