hakase

Woo I'm so glad to see this community here! I've missed it from the other place!

This is just news. See the pinned post at the top of the community for why this isn't nottheonion.

"Cockroach" is a perfect example of folk etymology. Speakers prefer that longer words be "digestible", able to be broken up into smaller, comprehensible meaning-chunks, and so, when confronted with long words that they can't easily parse into multiple chunks, speakers will sometimes make interpretable chunks instead by changing a few of the sounds of the original word.

If you've ever heard an older person refer to "Old Timer's Disease" for "Alzheimer's Disease", that's folk etymology.

This is particularly common in loanwords, which, since they follow the morphology of another language, aren't able to be broken into meaning chunks by speakers of the borrowing language. This frequently leads speakers to create folk etymologies for these borrowings. Some famous examples:

Key West, from Spanish Cayo Hueso "Bone Key". It always bothered me that Key West wasn't the westernmost key when I looked at maps of Florida as a kid, and now I know why - it was never "West Key", it was always "Bone Key", and sure enough, Key West looks a lot like a bone on a map.

Crayfish/crawfish, from French crevice (kruh-VEESH). Borrowed from French, English speakers heard that the second part of the word sounded kinda like "fish", and saw that the thing lived in the water, so folk etymologizing a compound ending in "fish" was straightforward.

Cockroach, from Spanish cucaracha was renamed after cock "rooster" and roach/loach, a type of fish.

My favorite kind of folk eytmology is diachronic, that is, when speakers forget what a word or a piece of a word in their own language used to mean, and folk etymologize it instead. This can even result in meaning shifts for the word in question after the folk etymology.

For example, hangnail comes from Old English ang-nægel "anguishing spike", which originally meant a foot corn, which can push into the skin toward the bone like a painful spike. Well, English speakers forgot that "ang" meant the same thing as the "ang" in "anguish", and folk etymologized it to "hang + nail" instead.

But, once the form of the word had changed, the meaning shifted as well based on the new form of the word, and so now a hangnail is the little flap of skin that sometimes hangs around the edge of fingernails.

Other examples of this sort of folk etymology with resulting meaning shift include forlorn hope, from Dutch verloren hoop "lost troop/boarding party"; sandblind, from Old English samblind "half-blind" (note also that Samwise Gamgee's first name actually means "halfwit"); and shamefaced, from Old English schamfast "firm in modesty", with the older meaning of fast seen in "fast asleep" and "tie/make something fast", that is, "fixed in place".

This isn't a meme - it's just a picture.

I've been really curious to try LMDE, but I've got everything working exactly like I want it to in regular Mint and don't want to screw it up.

Respect for unselecting your own upvote - Lemmy hardcore mode.

Thanks, this is an excellent point that my comment doesn't account for.

Insert "person you hate just made a great point" meme.

God, Lemmings are such a bunch of fucking hypocrites. Loudly advocating for privacy and huge, faceless, multibillion-dollar corporations not being able to sell personal information to governments out one side of their ass, all while upvoting bullshit like this to high heaven and sucking off government surveillance in the comments out the other.

News flash: giving governments access to megacorps' personal data doesn't mean they'll only use that data in the tiny number of ways that you agree with, or only against the people you don't like!

Edit for context: the other top comment was getting hammered with downvotes when I posted this.

So a lot of words for "yes, I agree with you, your compass is spot-on", then?

3 years later and I'm still on Mint.

If it weren't him it would be someone else.

This is just political news, which is not nottheonion according to the pinned post at the top of this community.

This government? Not at all. They've even done this once already with the new elecric mail trucks. Unfortunately this is just another Wednesday in the Trump administration.

Refer to the pinned post in this community to see that the mods agree - these sorts of posts are not nottheonion.

I thought the book was fine - it felt a lot more annoying to read than the first book for some reason. I was so tired of the baby T-Rex by the end.

Wrong community - this is just news.

This is why I think Tomorrow Never Dies is one of the most underrated films in the franchise.

hakase

@ hakase @lemmy.zip

Posts

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hakase

Well damn 😅

See that counter

Trump Nominates Fox News Contributor as Next Surgeon General

Naming things amirite?

What is your favorite smell?

very rare to catch wild buses drinking water

I'm sure the AI will make it run even faster.

Sam Altman is “the face of evil” for not reporting school shooter, says lawyer

Sam Altman is “the face of evil” for not reporting school shooter, says lawyer

Ted Cruz Rips FCC Over ABC Broadcast License Review Following Kimmel Joke: ‘It Is Not Government’s Job to Censor Speech’

Sam Altman is “the face of evil” for not reporting school shooter, says lawyer

Compass

I'm sure the AI will make it run even faster.

Fetterman Helps GOP Senators Sink Democrat Effort to Block Trump War on Cuba

Justice department indicts ex-FBI director James Comey over Instagram post showing seashells | James Comey

US government pays $900 million to exit wind projects

What movie franchise gets worse with each new film?

US government pays $900 million to exit wind projects

socialrulesm

The perfect Bond villain owns the James Bond franchise

New Year's breakfast - homemade shortening biscuits using my grandma's recipe and turkey sausage gravy

Does anyone have video proof of successfully using Soulsucker on Garl Vinland in the original Demon's Souls?

Gamers Nexus's 3-hour GPU smuggling documentary is finally back up after being fraudulently DMCA'd by Bloomberg. Go give them a watch to make up for some of the lost traction!

Gamers Nexus's 3-hour GPU smuggling documentary is finally back up after being fraudulently DMCA'd by Bloomberg. Go give them a watch to try to make up for the lost traction!

Any way to share iPad screen over Zoom on Mint?