Etsy

Etsy is an e-commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items and supplies, as well as unique factory-manufactured items. These items cover a wide range, including art, photography, clothing, jewelry, food, bath and beauty products, quilts, knick-knacks, and toys.

Etsy was founded in 2005 and this online marketplace now has millions of registered users - and more than $100 million in revenue.

The company name origin was a mystery and continues to be deliberately mysterious.

In a 2010 interview for Reader's Digest, co-founder Rob Kalin said “I wanted a nonsense word because I wanted to build the brand from scratch. I was watching Fellini's 8½ and writing down what I was hearing. In Italian, you say 'etsi' a lot. It means 'oh, yes.' And in Latin, it means 'and if.'"

But, the following year the other co-founder, Chris Maguire, said that "We then made a founder's pact to give a different origin story for the site's name every time someone asked about it."

Pseudonyms: Sports

A number of athletes have chosen to use pseudonyms. These are not to be confused with nicknames. For example, Cal Ripken, Jr. was who played in 2,632 consecutive games, over 16 seasons without a game off, which earned him the nickname “Iron Man.”

But a pseudonym is a more formal, permanent and usually legal name change. Some sports pseudonyms include:

Joe Louis (Joseph Louis Barrow)
Chi Chi Rodriguez (Juan Antonio Rodriguez)
Chipper Jones (Larry Wayne Jones, Jr.)
Whitey Ford (Edward Charles Ford)
Babe Ruth (George Herman Ruth, Jr.)
Casey Stengel (Charles Dillon Stengel; originally named after the initials of his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, or "K.C.")
Chad Ochocinco (Chad Javon Johnson)
Chi Chi Rodriguez (Juan Antonio Rodriguez)
Chipper Jones (Larry Wayne Jones, Jr.)
Cristiano Ronaldo (Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro)

A few interesting name change stories:



Yogi Berra ( born Lawrence Peter Berra) grew up in St. Louis and while playing in American Legion baseball, he received the nickname "Yogi" from his friend Jack Maguire. After seeing a newsreel about India, Jack said that Larry resembled a Hindu yogi whenever he sat around with arms and legs crossed waiting to bat or while looking sad after a losing game.

Another complicated - and confusing - sports name change is that of Abdul-Karim al-Jabbar, a former football running back. He played in the National Football League (NFL) from 1996 to 2000 with the Miami Dolphins, Cleveland Browns, and Indianapolis Colts. He was previously known as Karim Abdul-Jabbar and was born Sharmon Shah. In 1995, Sharmon Shah, a Muslim, was given the name "Karim Abdul-Jabbar" by his Imam.

In his NFL debut, some viewers and even some commentators mistakenly believed that he was the son of former basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Both had attended UCLA.





Basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had played at UCLA under the name (Ferdinand) Lew(is) Alcindor. In 1968, Alcindor converted to Sunni Islam, but he did not begin publicly using his Arabic name until 1971.

Erasmus Said...

Many of the adages that have become commonplace in many European languages, are attributed to Erasmus.

Equivalents in English include:

More haste, less speed
The blind leading the blind
A rolling stone gathers no moss
One man's meat is another man's poison
Necessity is the mother of invention
One step at a time
To be in the same boat
To lead one by the nose
A rare bird
Even a child can see it
To walk on tiptoe
One to one
Out of tune
A point in time
I gave as bad as I got (I gave as good as I got)
To call a spade a spade
Hatched from the same egg
Up to both ears
As though in a mirror
Think before you start
What's done cannot be undone
Many parasangs ahead (Miles ahead)
We cannot all do everything
Many hands make light work
A living corpse
Where there's life, there's hope
To have one foot in Charon's boat (To have one foot in the grave)
To cut to the quick
Time reveals all things
Golden handcuffs
Crocodile tears
To lift a finger
You have touched the issue with a needle-point (To have nailed it)
To walk the tightrope
Time tempers grief (Time heals all wounds)
With a fair wind
To dangle the bait
Kill two birds with one stone
To swallow the hook
The bowels of the earth
Happy in one's own skin
Hanging by a thread
The dog is worthy of his dinner
To weigh anchor
To grind one's teeth
Nowhere near the mark
To throw cold water on
Complete the circle
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
No sooner said than done
Neither with bad things nor without them
Between a stone and a shrine (Between a rock and a hard place)
Like teaching an old man a new language
A necessary evil
There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip
To squeeze water out of a stone
To leave no stone unturned
Let the cobbler stick to his last
God helps those who help themselves
The grass is greener over the fence
The cart before the horse
Dog in the manger
One swallow doesn't make a summer
His heart was in his boots
To sleep on it
To break the ice
Ship-shape
To die of laughing
To have an iron in the fire
To look a gift horse in the mouth
Neither fish nor flesh
Like father, like son
Not worth a snap of the fingers
He blows his own trumpet
To show one's heels
A snail's pace

Crank, cranky and crank it up

Sometimes word origins are not very complicated. Such is the case with the English word "crank" (noun) and "cranky" (adjective).

In our modern usage, cranky means describes someone who is irritable or ill tempered.

Etymologically, our use goes back to late 19th century Germany. The German word spelled krank meant to be sick or cross or out of sorts. English speakers anglicized the word and swapped the k for a c and added the -y to make the adjective.

What's the connection to crank meaning the lever used to make a rotary or oscillatory motion to a rotating shaft? None that I can find.

In the early days of automobiles and airplanes, you need to crank the engine to get it started. That handle or propeller turned the crankshaft of the engine and created the initial spark. Much later, when cars no longer needed that hand starting, people began to use the work in phrases such as "crank it up" to mean to kick up or increase something. "Crank up the volume" might still be used, though even that is less likely to mean turning a volume dial, but rather to click a volume icon.

Trojan Horse

In our time, a "Trojan Horse" has come metaphorically to mean any trick or stratagem that causes a target to invite a foe into a securely protected bastion or place. The term is derived from the Ancient Greek story of the deceptive wooden horse that led to the fall of the city of Troy

Homer and the Roman poet Virgil wrote about the fall of Troy and the horse, though they didn't explain why the Trojans fell for the trick.

In the Aeneid, Prince Aeneas tells us that his fellow Trojans went out of the city to examine the deserted Greek encampment and found this enormous wooden horse. Was it a gift? Was it something of value that they just didn't want to haul back home?  They did not know it was filled with Greek soldiers. The Trojans were split on what to do with the horse but, at the urging of Thymoetes, they brought the horse into the city.

In Virgil's Aeneid, Book II[7] (trans. A. S. Kline), he tells this:

After many years have slipped by, the leaders of the Greeks,
opposed by the Fates, and damaged by the war,
build a horse of mountainous size, through Pallas's divine art,
and weave planks of fir over its ribs:
they pretend it's a votive offering: this rumour spreads.
They secretly hide a picked body of men, chosen by lot,
there, in the dark body, filling the belly and the huge
cavernous insides with armed warriors.

Our modern day version of a Trojan horse is usually a malicious computer program which tricks users into willingly running allowing it into their computer or device. This "Trojan horse" (or sometimes simply a "Trojan") is not like a computer virus or worm. Trojans generally do not attempt to inject themselves into other files or otherwise propagate themselves. And the worse part is that the victim allowed the attack to occur.

I suppose our modern Trojans are a form of social engineering, as was the Greek version in that the victims were duped. Today, it might come from opening an email attachment or link that looks friendly or tempts us with a gift or great offer.

Soccer, Football and Rugby

American football season is in full power, but the world's football is America's soccer. But soccer as the name for what the world knows as football is not an Americanism. The "soccer" term is actually an English export, just like the sport.

"Soccer" was a colloquial term used in England well into the 20th century and rose in popularity following World War II. But it fell out of favor in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Today, the term is used outside the U.S. mostly in an American context, such as when referring to leagues like Major League Soccer (MLS). The term "soccer" is also used in countries that have their own competing version of American style football, such as Canada, and Australia.

In England in the early 1800s, a version of the sport of football was played based on a game played by “commoners" in the Middle Ages. It found its way into some of England's privileged schools. A set of standard rules was drafted by students in Cambridge in 1848 and were further developed by the Football Association in 1863.

A variation was established in 1871 with the founding of the Rugby Football Union using Rugby School (where the game was first played) rules from the 1830s that allowed a player to run with the ball in their hands. Rugby football, or rugger, separated itself from association football, the traditional feet-only version of the sport.

Association football would get the nickname assoccer, leading eventually to just soccer. The addition of an "er" at the end of a word was something of a trend at the time, which is why we get the awkward transformation of association into assoccer and soccer.

The first recorded American football game was between the colleges of Rutgers and Princeton in 1869 and used unique rules derived from those in both association and rugby football.

Simply called "football" in the U.S., elsewhere it would become known as gridiron football or American football, much in the way Gaelic football and Australian football have their own distinctions.

The world ended up with two footballs, on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Neither side would give up the name, so Americans started referring to England's football by the previous nickname, soccer.

Skype

Skype was developed from the idea that we would be using "video phones" - an idea that has been floating around in sci-fi since the 1950s.

When it became a reality, it was expensive and limited.  Skype took advantage of the growing ubiquity of webcams to bring the idea to the masses.

Skype is a peer-to-peer communication technology, meaning one person connects to another person. Skype was founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennström, from Sweden, and Janus Friis, from Denmark.

The name for the software is derived from "Sky peer-to-peer", which was then abbreviated to "Skyper." Unfortunately, some of the domain names associated with "Skyper" were already taken, so the company dropped the "r" for Skype.

Microsoft Corporation acquired Skype Communications in 2011 for US $8.5 billion.

Humor and Humors

Humour (British English) or humor (American English) is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. But this funny version of the word comes from what was once a very serious term in ancient medicine.

The ancient Greeks taught that the balance of four fluids/humours in the human body controlled human health and emotion.

In Latin, humor meant a "body fluid."

The blood was believed to be produced exclusively by the liver.

BILE = a bitter, alkaline, brownish-yellow or greenish-yellow fluid that is secreted by the liver, stored in the gallbladder, and discharged into the duodenum and aids in the emulsification, digestion, and absorption of fats - from Latin bilis "fluid secreted by the liver" (also known as choler),

Excess of yellow bile was thought to produce aggression, and reciprocally excess anger to cause liver derangement and imbalances in the humors.

The Middle English melancholie comes from the Late Latin melancholia and earlier from Greek melancholía meaning the condition of having black bile. An excess of black bile was understood to cause depression, and inversely a decline of feeling or opinion cause the liver to produce blood contaminated with black bile.

Phlegm was thought to be associated with apathetic behavior, as preserved in the word "phlegmatic." In Middle English it was fleem  and in Middle French flemme both from Late Latin phlegma via Greek phlégma meaning "flame" equivalent to phlég(ein) to burn + -ma.

Ghosting

When someone disappears from a relationship like a ghost...

"Ghosting" is a term that has been around since at least 2011. It means breaking off a relationship (often an intimate relationship) by ceasing all communication and contact with the former partner without any apparent warning or justification. You disappear, like a ghost. It also includes ignoring any attempts by the person ghosted to reach out or communicate.

It was especially popular in the context of online relationships and dating which are easier relationships to shut down. It was included in the Collins English Dictionary in 2015.

A few ghostly offshoots of the term are ghostbusting, Marleying and Caspering.



The term "ghostbusting" is when you force someone to reply - as a Ghostbuster forces a ghost into a trap.



"Marleying" comes from the ghostly character Marley from Dickens' A Christmas Carol and is used for the specific situation of when an ex gets in touch with you at Christmas or New Year's Eve out of nowhere.



 “Caspering” has its origin with the comic book friendly ghost, Casper). This is friendlier kind of ghosting when instead of just totally ignoring someone, you’re honest about how you feel, and let them down gently before disappearing from their lives.

These are just four words that have emerged around the newest world of dating.

Odds-and-ends

Today, we use the phrase "odds-and-ends" to refer to all kinds of miscellaneous or remnant items.

They can be physical objects. "Everyone has an odds-and-ends drawer full of things." 

It can also refer to something non-physical, such as in "I have some odds-and-ends [chores] to take care of this weekend."

an odds-and-ends drawer

The origin of the phrase goes back to the mid-sixteenth century when the idiom "odd ends" referred to the leftover scrap materials from making something, such as the fragments of cloth or lumber from a project.

Countries Ending in -stan

Have you noticed how may countries end with -stan? This suffix comes from the Proto-Indo-European language which was a prehistoric Eurasian language. Linguists have reconstructed it and find it in many language descendants.

In Russian -stan means “settlement.” In other Slavic languages it means “state.” But it is the ancient Indo-Iranian peoples (descendants of Proto-Indo-Europeans who moved east and south from the Eurasian steppe) who used -stan to mean “place” or “place of” that we find in the names of the modern countries.

Urdu and Pashto, the official languages of Pakistan and Afghanistan respectively, both descend from the Indo-Iranian language. Also the former Soviet -stan countries have historically been mostly ethnically Turkic and speak languages from the Turkic family.

So, Afghanistan is the "Land of the Afghans.”

Kazakhstan is the “Land of the Kazakhs” and Kazakh is derived from a Turkic word meaning “independent.”

Kyrgyzstan being the “Land of the Kyrgyz” and Kyrgyz is thought to come from the Turkic word for “forty” being a reference to forty clans that banded together.

Though Pakistan - “Land of the Pure” in Urdu could come from the Indo-Iranian pak, word for “pure/clean”), the country’s name was constructed as an acronym in the 1930s. It referes to the area’s constituent cultures: Punjabi + Afghani + Kashmiri + Sindhi + Balochistan with an "i" inserted to aid pronunciation.

Tajik historically was used by Turks to refer to “non-Turks” that spoke Iranian-related languages, so Tajikistan is the "Land of the Tajiks.”

Turkmenistan is the “Land of the Turkmen.”

Uzbeki+stan rom Uzbek which either comes from Uzbek Khan, a tribal leader who united different groups in the region, or a combination of Turkic words meaning “his own master.”


Source: Mental Floss

Literary Titles Taken From the Bible

I discovered while studying literature as an undergraduate that many of the novels I was reading had titles taken from phrases in the Bible.

A list on goodreads.com of Book Titles Based on Lines from the Bible has several hundred possible titles. Here is some information on just a few.

The Sun Also Rises was a title that took Ernest Hemingway a while to select. The book was published in the UK in 1927 with the title Fiesta. After that, he decided on using a line from Ecclesiastes, which he also used as the novel's epigraph.

“What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.”

Corinthians (13:12) provides the line “For now we see through a glass, darkly,” which has been used by several novelists, but it was also the inspiration for A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick, a novel about drug culture which was also made into a film by the same name.

Henry James used a Biblical reference for his novel The Golden Bowl which is also taken from Ecclesiastes (12:6): “…or the golden bowl be broken, …then shall the dust return to the earth as it was.”

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is a 1941 book. The words are by James Agee and the photographs are by Walker Evans. It documents the lives of impoverished tenant farmers during the Great Depression. The title is from a passage in the Wisdom of Sirach (44:1) that begins, "Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us".

The William Faulkner novel Absalom, Absalom! uses the Biblical story of Absalom, a son of David who rebelled against his father (then King of the Kingdom of Israel). Absalom was killed by one of David's generals, Joab, in violation of David's order to deal gently with his son. His death caused much heartbreak to David.

Faulkner also used a Bible reference from the Psalms for his title The Wild Palms. That book was later published under the title If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem and now is usually listed under both titles. Look at some of his other titles and you can see the influence: Light in August, and Go Down, Moses. 

East of Eden by John Steinbeck takes its title from the Bible's Land of Nod. This place mentioned in the Book of Genesis of the Hebrew Bible and is said to be located "on the east of Eden."It is the place where Cain was exiled by God after Cain had murdered his brother Abel.

Flannery O'Connor's novel The Violent Bear It Away  uses a verse from the translation in the Douay-Rheims Bible: "And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away" (Matthew 11:12).

Toni Morrison chose Song of Solomon as a title. Rather than being a verse from the Bible, it is a book of the Old Testament. The Song of Songs, also Song of Solomon or Canticles  is one of the scrolls) found in the last section of the Tanakh, known as the Ketuvim (or "Writings"), and a book of the Old Testament.

The Song of Songs is unique within the Hebrew bible as it shows no interest in Law or Covenant or Yahweh the God of Israel, nor does it teach or explore Wisdom like Proverbs or Ecclesiastes, but it celebrates sexual love, giving "the voices of two lovers, praising each other, yearning for each other, proffering invitations to enjoy."  In modern Judaism the Song is read on the Sabbath during the Passover, which marks the beginning of the grain harvest as well as commemorating the Exodus from Egypt. Jewish tradition reads it as an allegory of the relationship between God and Israel, and Christianity sees it as an allegory of Christ and his "bride", the Church.

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Scientist

There were scientists long before we had the word "scientist" to describe them. The word really doesn't appear until 1834,when it was coined from Latin scientia by the Rev. William Whewell, a Cambridge University historian and philosopher. He wrote it in the same paragraph in which he coined "physicist."

The word "science" was already in use having come from Middle English via Middle French back to Latin scientia meaning "knowledge" as equivalent to scient- (stem of sciēns), present participle of scīre to know + -ia .

A scientist was first seen as a kind of artiste, in the sense of one who cultivates one of the arts presided over by the Muses (history, poetry, comedy, tragedy, music, dancing, astronomy. By the 17th century, it was also used for "one skilled in any art or craft" which would have included professors, surgeons, craftsmen, cooks etc. ). Since mid-18c. especially of "one who practices the arts of design or visual arts."

Aristotle was described as a natural philosopher.
Was he a scientist?

In 1840, Whewell said that Leonardo da Vinci was mentally a seeker after truth and so he was a scientist. Whewell was the master of Trinity College at Cambridge and a fairly good scientist himself in writing about geology, oceanic tides, and mathematics.

At the time, he was friends with scientists of the day such as Faraday and Darwin. Whewell was one of the Cambridge dons whom Charles Darwin met during his education there, and when Darwin returned from the Beagle voyage he was directly influenced by Whewell, who persuaded Darwin to become secretary of the Geological Society of London. The title pages of On the Origin of Species open with a quotation from Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise about science founded on a natural theology of a creator establishing laws:

"But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this—we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws."

Michael Faraday is best known for his study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. He is responsible for discovering the laws of electrolysis, and for popularizing terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion - all terms proposed in large part by William Whewell.

Whewell was writing a book, The Philosophy of the Inductive Science, which helped lay out basic questions in science like: How do you come up with a hypothesis? How do you prove it? Should it be universal?