One of the things I love about the English language is how interrelated so many of its words are. For example, when I was looking up the meaning of “kenspeckle” (a Scots word that means “well-known” or “conspicuous”), I was curious if the “speck” part was related to “spectacle.” I didn’t find a definitive answer, but my research led me to realize that there is a whole series of spec\/spic words in English that all come from the same Latin root: special, species, specimen, spectacle, spectrum, speculate, inspect, prospect, suspect, perspective, perspicuous, conspicuous, etc. It blew my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later, as I was writing the word “incorporate” I realized that the meaning of it was probably literally “to add into a body.” That turned out to be true. For a word so obviously derived from Latin, you can make an intuitive leap with some confidence that you’re right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But English gets its words from so many sources that it’s especially tricky. One day, as I was writing the word “bully,” I wondered if it might mean literally “like a bull.” Wouldn’t that make so much sense? But, according to Merriam-Webster, “The earliest meaning of English bully<\/em> was ‘sweetheart.’ The word was probably borrowed from Dutch boel,<\/em> ‘lover.'” The word then went through a series of transformations that took it from referring to a “good fellow” to a “blustering daredevil” to its current meany-pants definition. I never would have or could have guessed that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n English pronunciations are tricky, too. A recent discussion about how to pronounce the last name “Hough” (usually “huff,” but sometimes “how”) made me consider how many ways there are in English to pronounce “-ough.” There are more even than I had realized. My favorite case is the word “slough<\/a>,” which rhymes with “cuff,” “cow,” or “coo,” depending on how it’s used. Though I never use the word to describe a swampy area, it always reminds me of the “Slough of Despond<\/a>,” which I learned about in high school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the things I love about the English language is how interrelated so many of its words are. For example, when I was looking up the meaning of “kenspeckle” (a Scots word that means “well-known” or “conspicuous”), I was … Continue reading