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Day: March 19, 2017
Who invented the word “Mathematics”?
In its modern meaning of mathematics, the earliest citation Liddell–Scott give is the treatise of the same name by Archytas. (However, the German Wikipedia doubts that was the original title of his work.) The term comes into its own in its modern meaning in Aristotle, a generation later, who uses it extensively. Plato was the […]
Who has invented the word philosophia?
The word is all over the place in Plato and his contemporaries and it’s not in Homer. Philosophy – Wikipedia guesses that Pythagoras probably came up with it first. The basis for that guess, from what I can tell, is that as cited in LSJ (s.v. φιλόσοφος), both Cicero (Tusc. 5.3.9) and Diogenes Laertes (prooem […]
What language games do linguists play?
More of a polyglot game, this, than a linguist game, but: switch the TV to a foreign language film halfway through, and try to work out what the language is. The fact that the language almost always sustains a local film industry does constrain the possible choices. The rule of thumb I worked out quite […]
What is the Greek equivalent of “Skin in the Game”?
Tough one, I agree. And it turns out OP was after Ancient Greek. For Modern Greek, I agree with Yiannis Papadopoulos’ answer to What is the Greek equivalent of “Skin in the Game”? that “skin in the game” is about emotional investment, not “putting your ass on the line”. It’s easier for me to actually […]
What are some examples of word-play in constructed languages such as Esperanto and Lojban?
Esperanto neurotically tried to avoid lexical ambiguity, but didn’t get there for compounding, and between that and soundalikes, it’s doing ok. Raymond Schwartz was the main punmaster of the language. Examples: the sundry aĝo “age” compounds in La Diversaj Aĝoj de l’ Homo, or the groanworthy “tumble dry” of Molière in El “Verdkata Testamento” (1926); […]
Technically speaking, is Doggo a pidgin language?
Hate to bring the serious to the answer, but I’m with Jiim Klein: Pidgins are called that because of their origins, rather than their grammar, although they do tend to be remarkably similar. “Foreigner talk”, the way people dumb down language when talking to non-fluent speakers, are informally called pidgins, and indeed foreigner talk is […]
Could someone tell of “owt” or “nowt” regarding Yorkshire?
Well, this is what the Googles gets me (with a peek at the OED): http://www.yorkshiredialect.com/… Owt and Nowt are shibboleths for Yorkshire: they are very common dialect words. The historical pronunciation seems to be something like /ou/. They are indeed derived from aught and naught; the spelling with an au is from Early Modern Southern […]