Etymology gleanings for June 2023
The Oxford Etymologist answers readers’ questions about American English vowels, the word “night”, and “love” in English and Greek.
The Oxford Etymologist answers readers’ questions about American English vowels, the word “night”, and “love” in English and Greek.
Quite naturally, speakers connect words that sound alike. From a strictly scholarly point of view, “sore” and “sorrow” are unrelated, but for centuries, people thought differently, and folk etymology united the two long ago.
English has a big bagful of auxiliary verbs. You may know these as helping verbs as they help the main verb express its meaning.
There is huge excitement about ChatGPT and other large generative language models that produce fluent and human-like texts in English and other human languages. But these models have one big drawback, which is that their texts can be factually incorrect (hallucination) and also leave out key information (omission).
The Oxford Etymologist looks at the origin of the word “day” and its connections across the Indo-European language world.
There’s been a lot of hype recently about the emergence of technologies like ChatGPT and the effects they will have on science and society. Linguists have been especially curious about what highly successful large language models (LLMs) mean for their business.
The Oxford Etymologist tackles the convoluted history of “bud” and “buddy” – the final part of the series.
The Oxford Etymologist tackles the convoluted history of “bud” and “buddy”.
Does the recent, impressive performance of Large Language Models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, have any repercussions for the way in which linguists carry out their work? And what is a Language Model anyway?
During the news coverage of the COVID pandemic, I enjoyed seeing Dr Anthony Fauci on television and hearing his old-school Brooklyn accent. My favorite expression to listen for was his use of “down the pike” to mean “in the future.”
Observing how various words for “friend” originate and develop is a rather curious enterprise.
All over the Indo-European map, the main word of negation begins with “n”. What is in this sound that invites denial, refutation, or repulsion?
The Oxford Etymologist dives into the history and meaning of the word “coward” – and what does cowardice have to do with custard?
Always, let me thank our correspondents for consulting the blog, asking questions, and offering words of encouragement.
When people think about careers in writing, they may focus on writing novels or films, poetry or non-fiction. But for steady work, there is nothing like technical writing.
The root of riddle “puzzle,” from rædels(e), is Old English rædan “to read.”