Amazon, my favorite recourse when the textbooks offered in the bookstore are too pricey, has recently been showered with heavy criticism for removing rankings from books it deems to have “adult content.” Rankings are what get an author’s books into search results and bestsellers lists, so it is frustrating for any writer to have that taken away. However, when “adult” is defined as “containing LGBT/homosexual content,” which is essentially what seems to have happened, then there is ample room for the Internet to be indignant.

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“The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it,” said George Washington. He may be the namesake of the District we live in, but he could still be a real downer. In fact, when used intelligently and sparingly, swearing offers college students a myriad of benefits.

Dr. Kate Burridge, a professor of linguistics at Monash University, explains: “Studies show that if you’re with a group of close friends, the more relaxed you are, the more you swear. It’s a way of saying: ‘I’m so comfortable here I can let off steam. I can say whatever I like.’” This use for swearing is more common among guys and, in general, women and men report feeling more shocked when they hear a woman swear than a man. This response certainly hearkens back to the traditional role of females as keepers and transmitters of manners and social values. I think it is safe to say that those days are over.
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Why do the Caesars of our world get “assassinated” when the rest of us have to make do with merely being “murdered”? Maybe I have my priorities in the wrong place, but this has always bothered me. The answer can be found in—guess what!—word history.

Murder derives from Old Norse morð, which came from the Proto-Indo-European base *mor “to die,” from whence we received Latin words such as mors, “death,” and eventually our English word “mortal.” Interestingly, in Germanic culture morð was understood as “concealed or unlawful killing” and thus the “murderer” was subject to vengeance and dishonor that a plain killer would not be.

Assassin, and hence assassinate, has several disputed etymologies. The first and most popular says that “assassin” is derived from Arabian hashishiyyin, “hashish-users, referring to the drug which medieval Muslim mercenaries took while they committed their killings. That’s clear enough; plus, it draws a nice, simplistic picture of violent drug-imbibing Orientals (despite that no contemporary sources mention the killers having intoxicants, except Marco Polo who probably made it up).

A second version says that “assassin” comes from Hashashin, which also meant “hashish-eaters” and was an alternative designation for the Nizari branch of the Isma’ili Shi’a Muslims. … Wait, that’s not clear at all!
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MSB, SFS, GUSA, ICC, GUROP, GERMS. Georgetown life is rife with acronyms. Nobody envies the incoming freshman who have to learn not only all the stuff that this alphabet soup refers to, but also the conventions determining how these acronyms are pronounced in spoken conversation.

Most of the time we spell our acronyms out letter by letter (”I.C.C.,” “M.S.B.”). But some we pronounce as if they were words (”goo-rop,” “germs,” “gap”), and other times we do whatever is convenient and suits our affections (”dops” for DPS). Then there are those acronyms that we avoid referring to in conversation for fear that our tongue cannot pronounce them or that our memory cannot contain such a long string of letters.

This much is obvious to any Georgetown student who has been here more than a semester. What we all might be surprised to learn, though, is how many common, everyday words were acronyms before they became words.
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“I didn’t have time to do the reading, so I sparknoted it.” “I googled all of my boyfriend’s ex-girlfriends.” “She spent all day youtubing Laguna Beach clips.” “We weren’t home, but Dad tivoed it.”

“Verbing nouns,” i.e., using derivational morphemes to convert nouns into verbs, is an entirelly natural part of the English language. Shakespeare did it when he wrote “Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle.” I do it when I complain or adulate about having to blog on Sunday mornings. Verbification is an example of a “functional shift,” and cognitive scientists report that functionally shifted words result in a sudden increase in brain activity. As long as you don’t bring up the word “impact” around language prescriptivists (who insist that “the only thing that can be impacted is a wisdom tooth”), verbification is hunky-dory.

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What is the first word that comes out when you stub your toe or start banging your head against the desk after six hours of nonstop studying? Is it “ow,” “ouch,” “ay,” or something else?

According to the Online Etymology dictionary, “ouch” derives from the German cry of pain, “autsch.” Since the earliest examples of “ouch” have been found in the U.S., it is likely that the German word was transmitted into English via Pennsylvania German version of “autsch,” which was “outch.” In any case, it is not clear where “autsch” came from—it is a relatively rare word in German—and the OED simply suggests it is “probably imitative” of the sounds that occur naturally when we experience pain.

Steven T. Byington, writing in the Dec. 1942 issue of American Speech, recalls that in his childhood, “the interjection of sudden pain was [aʊ], which we assumed to be merely the sound that the human voice spontaneously produces under the stimulus of sudden pain, but it is…coincident with the German ‘au.’”

Is there a consensus among languages as to what is the “natural, spontaneous sound” that emerges when one hurts oneself? In Japanese, the interjection expressing pain is “itai”; in Spanish it is “ay” (”although in Spanish it is oftener lamentation than pain,” according to Byington) and French has the similar “aïe”; meanwhile, the Russian interjection expressing pain is “Ой.” As for the ancient world, Greeks would use “ah” for sharp sudden pain, the Romans would exclaim “au,” “hau,” or “vau,” and in Hebrew the interjection was “oi.”

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“Sketchy…” “Sketch!” “Totally sketchville…” Sketchiness and the judging of things and situations as sketchy is so ubiquitous in teenage and college social culture that I never gave it a second thought. There are so many moments in daily life that beg for the word—Facebook stalking, the cream of mushroom soup at Leo’s, Blagojevich, that guy you met who constantly washes his hands with Clorox wipes. What did we ever do without “sketchy”?
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Valentine’s Day today may be all about lovey-dovey business, but “Valentine,” is actually based on the name Valentius, from Latin valentia meaning “strength, capacity.” Love is certainly the only kind of strength that matters (unless you are in the SFS, in which case you probably give credence to other kinds of strength such as economy and, you know, nuclear weapons). Read onward for some sweet etymologies.

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What does the word “schmooze” mean to you? Is schmoozing good, bad, ugly, indifferent? Would you schmooze with your friends, your girlfriend, your family? Think about it for a second and then look under the cut.

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If you are going to the Presidential Inauguration on Tuesday, you might not be assured a view of the main man himself, but you already know that you are going to encounter vast multitudes of people. The Hoya reports up to two million spectators coming to DC and lining up for the parade, ceremony, and other festivities. But are you going to see “hordes” of people?
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The name of the current month, January, was derived from Janus, the name of a Roman god with one head pointing toward the past and another head pointing toward the future. He is an appropriate symbol for the new year, which is a time when we reflect on our pasts to create plans and resolutions for the future.

In fact, there may be many people out there who, for the year 2009, have resolved to improve their vocabulary in English. Here are three strategies for expanding your vocabulary that I have found most effective.
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“That’s so awk!” “Awkward turtle!” “Stalkward!” “Wow, awkies…” “Awksome!” It seems like teenagers these days cannot get enough of the word awkward. However, the word happens to have a rather awkward etymology.

It comes from awk, a Middle English word meaning “back-handed, wrong way around, perverse,” added to the adverbial suffix -weard. As it turns out, “awkeward” was a directional term that meant “in the awk (i.e., wrong) direction”—this is why “awkward” is similar in spelling to the likes of “toward,” “forward,” and “backward.” Imagine—in old forms of English, it was acceptable “to go awkward” just like you we can “go forward” today!
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Almost immediately after I was assigned to live in Darnall Hall, one of my floormates left me a Facebook posting informing me that Darnall was ranked the fifteenth most sexually active dorm in the country, or something like that. I was rather intimidated at this prospect, but then I got to wondering—should I expect to see a lot of nakedness, or a lot of nudity?

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My family is hosting a couple of our Turkish friends during Thanksgiving. This has given my father ample opportunity for verbal witticism, such as “Since you are from Turkey, will you be bringing the turkey?” Bad puns aside, how did it happen that the country and the bird share the same name?

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Wordle is a nifty java applet that lets you make neat designs out of any text or webpage. The above is what I got when I plugged in the Indy blog (click to make it larger).

An Amazonian language brings Noam Chomsky’s theories about universal language into question: In my estimation, this is one of the more intriguing and dramatic academic debates in recent history. The Guardian recently published this overview, and the New Yorker published a longer article a couple of years ago, which you can still read here.

Wordlustitude collects and defines actual Internet nonce-words. Recent entries include  “dunderdoof” and “Paula Abdul-usional.” The citations (both real and made-up) are hilarious. This site is funny even if you are not a linguistics geek.

Look under the cut for more linkage…

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