Ask a bitter white middle-class male student!

[Edminster]

Isn't it a dry heat?

The response I get most to this statement is "So is an oven".

[AHMETxRock]

Why is LR asking people questions in this thread?

signed, a muslim.

[LordRetard]

Because I guess no one's really interested in hearing the opinions of a group that already constitutes the majority of the forum.

[Rainbow]

Hey, LordRetard. Do that linguistics thing that you do. Yeah, do that!

[LordRetard]

Hey, LordRetard. Do that linguistics thing that you do. Yeah, do that!

1. Rephrase that in the form of a question.
2. Ask me to do something more specific, because linguistics is actually a very wide field with many specialisations (really).

[mountainmage]

Dear BWMCMS,

Could you relate the story of a mundane word that has a rich and storied history?

[LordRetard]

Dear ANONYMOUS,

I could spin some bizarre and lengthy tale that I've read somewhere... However, there is a catch to this. Most of these entertaining stories are what we call "folk etymologies", where "folk" means "not real". This is because of people's own attempts to explain word change through limited historical data. Backronyms are very common, that is, giving an acronym to an existing word and suggesting that that is the actual origin. For instance, "shit" is supposedly an acronym for "ship high in transit"; however, no acronyms that old exist; acronyms are actually a fairly recent phenomenon. One very entertaining example of another type of folk etymology is the story of English longbowmen, who would supposedly be captured and have their arrow fingers cut off, only to be released, apparently. Of course they'd just use different fingers, thus their war cry, "I can still pluck yew!" There are too many reasons why none of this makes any sense.

What is VERY interesting is when folk etymology causes an actual word change, via reanalysis or other process. For instance, the spelling of the world "island", with a silent "s". The original word was spelt iland (at some time or another) and was of Germanic origin; however, it was reanalysed as related to Latin "insula", and the "s" was inserted into this uncomfortable and inappropriate space. This process is very common.

Signed, A Bunch of Letters I Guess

[smiley_cow]

Dear Bitter white middle-class male student,

What is the origin of the word sabotage?

Sincerely,
smiley_cow.

[LordRetard]

Dear smiley_cow,

Wikipedia proposes a few possibilities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabotage#Origin. But none of those really sound plausible. Rather, the word definitely came from French, where "sabotage" already had its modern meaning. Of course this doesn't explain why the French verb "saboter" is derived from "sabot", a word that cross-linguistically refers to a type of wooden shoe (compare Spanish "zapato"). One theory is that sabots happened to be of clumsy appearance, and thus the connotation was that to "saboter" was to do something badly and screw up, and then it later changed to be on purpose. It's more plausible than the story of sabotage using their wooden shoes but I still don't like it, personally. The origin of the word "sabot" is unknown. There is Arabic "sabbat", but my sources suggest that this is unlikely the origin, rather this word came into Arabic from Spanish; which is generally the other way around.

So, in conclusion, I don't really know, except to say that it has something to do with shoes.

Signed, that series of words

[Rainbow]

Dear Studious Male Middle-Class White Bitter Linguist,
What are the origins of the words 'lord' and 'retard'?
Retardedly Yours,
A Lord

[smiley_cow]

Dear smiley_cow,

Wikipedia proposes a few possibilities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabotage#Origin. But none of those really sound plausible. Rather, the word definitely came from French, where "sabotage" already had its modern meaning. Of course this doesn't explain why the French verb "saboter" is derived from "sabot", a word that cross-linguistically refers to a type of wooden shoe (compare Spanish "zapato"). One theory is that sabots happened to be of clumsy appearance, and thus the connotation was that to "saboter" was to do something badly and screw up, and then it later changed to be on purpose. It's more plausible than the story of sabotage using their wooden shoes but I still don't like it, personally. The origin of the word "sabot" is unknown. There is Arabic "sabbat", but my sources suggest that this is unlikely the origin, rather this word came into Arabic from Spanish; which is generally the other way around.

So, in conclusion, I don't really know, except to say that it has something to do with shoes.

Signed, that series of words

Thank you, this actually answers a couple of questions I had.

[LordRetard]

Dear A Lord (are lord? Who's are lord?),

Lord is a simple one, and its roots are well-known. Middle English is loverd or laverd, and Old English is hlēford or hlāford. This is actually a compound, "hléf weard", meaning bread guardian. What the hell does that mean! The first part of the word goes back to the reconstructed Indo-European *kel or *klei. The second half comes from Germanic *wāro, which is far enough for our sakes.

The word "retard" is one of many words that entered into English due to the Norman Conquest, the traditional date of which is 1066. It comes from a verb, "retarder", which means "to slow down". The Latin origin is retardāre, which comes from "tardus" and common prefix "re-".

Sincerely,
All those words you called me

[Asherian]

Are we going to start a whole series of these? Ask a pregnant woman, ask a pedophiliac British guy, or maybe ask a possibly 13 year old girl but more likely a 41 year old lonely man?

Shouldn't yours be more appropriately called "Ask a linguistics geek" LR? To really show you out of the crowd?

[Cirtur]

We stopped when Kurtis did it.

[Asherian]

Ah, hadn't seen his thread for it. But then again, I rarely ever notice anything he's done. Probably for the best.