Words for Granted - An etymology and linguistics podcast
Education & Explainer
About
Words for Granted is a podcast that looks at how words change over time. Host Ray Belli uses linguistic evolution as a way of understanding larger historical and cultural changes.
Episodes
- The Proto-Indo-European Puzzle: Interview with Laura Spinney
In this episode, Ray chats with author Laura Spinney about Proto-Indo-European, the ancestral language of hundreds of modern languages spoken by billions today ranging from Western Europe to India. They explore how linguists reconstruct th…
- The Science and History of English Accents: Interview with Valerie Fridland
In this episode, Ray talks with linguist Valerie Friedland about accents—what they are, where they come from, and why everyone has one. They explore how accents begin in early childhood, how regional speech patterns change over time, and w…
- The History of the Alphabet: Interview with Danny Bate
In this episode, author Danny Bate walks through the alphabet's evolution from its origins in Egyptian hieroglyphs to the letters of the English alphabet familiar to us today. He explains why English spelling became so irregular, while als…
- Lessons on Language with the Grammar Girl (Mignon Fogerty)
In this episode, Ray chats with Mignon Fogerty, aka the Grammar Girl. "Good grammar" may seem like the epitome of prescriptivism, but when it comes to her "Quick and Dirty Tips", Mignon leans on a more ideologically neutral approach. Might…
- The Marvels of Translation: Interview with Keith Khan-Harris
What can we learn about the nature of translation by reading a warning message in hundreds of different languages? In this episode, Keith Kahn-Harris discusses his latest book, The Babel Message , in which the mundane, multilingual warning…
- The Power (and Omnipresence) of Rhetoric: Interview with Guy Doza
Rhetoric has a bad reputation. We tend to think of it as a linguistic tool used by polticians and marketing execs to maipulate the masses. While this stereotype is true, rhetoric is more than just snake oil––we use it in apologies, negotio…
- A Defense of "Bad" English: Interview with Valerie Fridland
Instead of criticizing deviations from Standard English as "wrong," what if we celebrated them as expressive lingusitic innovations? In this conversation with Valerie, we take a look at some of the quirky features of English that our langu…
- Learning New Languages: Interview with Rob Paterson
What goes into building a language learning curriculum? How do designers choose features within a language learing app? Are some approaches to language learning better than others, or is it up to the indiviudal? In this episode, I explore…
- Origins of Place Names: Interview with Duncan Madden
Place names are not random––behind the name of every country is a story of how it came to be. From stories of invasion and rebellion to the fantastical and mundane, author Duncan Madden takes us on a journey across the world in his latest…
- Grammatical Gender: Interview with Danny Bate
In this interview with linguist Danny Bate, we go deep on all things gender––grammatical gender, that is. Why do some languages have gender while others don't? Where does gender come from? What is the function of gender? To get 50% off you…
- Episode 109: Trivia
Trivia refers to obscure or useless information, but this definition is a far cry from the word's etymology. Trivia, or tri-via , literally means "three roads," and in Ancient Roman times, it referred to three-way intersections. These heav…
- African American English: Interview w/ Tracey Weldon
In this episode, I speak with Tracey Weldon, linguist and board advisor on the Oxford Dictionary of African American English project. We discuss the origins of AAE, the role of code switching within its speech community, AAE's contribution…
- Episode 108: Understand
What does "standing under" have to do with "understanding?" Nothing at all, which is why most of us probably overlook the obvious fact that "understand" is actually a compound word comprising "under" and "stand." In our exploration of this…
- Episode 107: World
In Old English, the word "world", or weorold , did not refer to a place. It was a compound word comprising wer , meaing "man", and ald , meaning "age". "World" literally meant "the age of man", and in many of its earliest usages, it's more…
- Deciphering Ancient Scripts: Interview with Silvia Ferrara
Have you ever wondered how writing was invented - or, how many times it was invented? How many undeciphered scripts has the ancient world left us, and is there any hope in eventually deciphering them? In this interview with Silvia Ferrara,…
- Episode 106: Grotesque
The etymology of "grotesque" is hiding in plain sight: "grotto-esque". Originally, the word was used to describe a style of ancient art that was discovered in underground grottos––or at least what appeared to be underground grottos. In the…
- Episode 105: Idiot
In Ancient Greece, an "idiot", or idiotes , was a "private person", which meant someone who did not hold a political office. In this episode, we explore how the word's modern pejorative connotation emerged. We also look into the word's 19t…
- Episode 104: Genius
Though people of extraordinary talents and intellect have always existed, the modern sense of "genius" didn't emerge until the relatively recent 18th century. In Ancient Rome, a "genius" was neither a person nor their brilliant works, but…
- Episode 103: Run Amok
Most Malay loanwords in English describe the local flora, fauna, and food of Southeast Asia. "Amok", however, is different. Amok, which describes a violent killing spree, is ultimately a Malay word that entered European languages during th…
- Episode 102: Hyperbola/Hyperbole & Ellipse/Ellipsis
"Hyperbola" and "ellipse" are geometrical curves, while "hyperbole" and "ellipsis" are rhetorical terms. At face value, it's not clear how the meanings of "hyperbola" and "ellipse" relate to those of "hyperbole" and "ellipsis", but the his…
- Episode 101: Parabola/Parable
The meanings of "parabola" and "parable" have very little to do with one another, yet these words are etymological doublets of a single Greek work, parabole , which meant "a throwing aside". In this episode, we explore how this literal mea…
- Episode 100: Google
Before Google was the name of one of the world's biggest tech companies, "googol" was an obscure math term that meant "ten to the one hundredth power". Five decades before the founding of Google, the word "googol" emerged spontaneously out…
- Episode 99: Average
The word "average" has anything but an average etymology. If the leading theory is correct, "average" ultimately derives from an Arabic word meaning "defect". In this episode, we explore how this Arabic word made its way into European lang…
- Why Is English Highly Irregular? (Interview with Arika Okrent)
English may be spoken by a whopping 1.5 billion ESL speakers around the world, but that doesn't mean it's an "easy" language to learn. For native English speakers, it's easy to take for granted just how irregular the English language is. I…
- Episode 98: Lost Letters: Long s (ſ) and Ampersand (&)
In many English works printed before the late 19th century, a letter unfamiliar to us today, ſ, is often used in place of the letter S. However, that unfamiliar f-looking letter is actually just an archaic form of the letter S called "long…
- Episode 97: Lost Letters: Ash (Æ, æ) and Ethel (Œ, œ)
If you've ever encountered the ligatures æ and œ in old texts, you may have wondered: what are they called? Where do they come from? How exactly are they pronounced? Why don't we use them any more? The ligatures ash and ethel are rare in E…
- Nine Nasty Words (Interview with John McWhorter) [EXPLICIT]
F*ck. Sh*t. C*ck. These are some of the most profane words in the English language, but what exactly makes them profane? Is there something about profanities that makes them different from ordinary vanilla words? In this interview, I speak…
- Episode 96: Lost Letters: Wynn (Ƿ), Insular G (ᵹ), Yogh (Ȝ)
Before the letter W was invented, the rune wynn was borrowed into the Latin AngloSaxon alphabet as a way of representing the /w/ sound. The letter yogh evolved out of Insular G, an Irish variation of the traditional letter G. The phonetic…
- Episode 95: Lost Letters: Eth and Thorn (Ð,ð and Þ, þ)
In Modern English, we use the TH digraph to represent the voiced and voiceless dental fricative sounds. However, English previously had two unique letters that did this same job: eth and thorn. In this episode, we look at the origin and de…
- Episode 94: The Lost Letters of the English Alphabet (Overview)
You can't have the English language without the ABC's, right? Wrong. In this overview episode, we look at the history of the alphabet and the many changes it has undergone from its Phoenician origins to today. We also consider the signific…
- Episode 93: Pasta
'Pasta' is first attested in English during the 1800's, which is later than one might expect. However, in prior centuries, a handful of its closely related cognates such as 'paste,' 'pastry,' 'pastel,' and others were borrowed into English…
- Episode 92: Meals (Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner)
In today's episode, we look at the etymologies of our meal words––not to mention "meal" itself. (As it turns out, "meal" has a long history of usage as a measurement word.) The meanings of our meal words have shifted over time in concert w…
- Interview with Tim Brookes, founder of Endangered Alphabets
In this interview episode, I speak with Tim Brookes, founder of the Endangered Alphabets Project. Among many other things, we discuss why preserving endangered writing systems is so important to the cultures that use them, how writings sys…
- Episode 91: Artichoke
In ancient Greek botanical literature, there is a reference to a spiny plant called a kaktos . This word would pass into Modern English as "cactus," though the kaktos itself was certainly not a cactus as we know it. More likely, it was an…
- Episode 90: Apple
In this episode, we explore the etymology of the most culturally ubiquitous fruit, the apple. Etymologically, the ubiquity of the apple is fitting, since it originally used to refer to apples and all fruits in general. We also explore the…
- Episode 89: Cheese
In the episode, we explore the etymology of 'cheese,' a Latin-derived word that entered the Germanic languages through trade long before the emergence of English. We also consider why the Italian and French words for cheese, formaggio and…
- Episode 88: Egg
The word 'egg' plays a part in one of the most famous anecdotes in the written record about the evolution of the English language. In this episode, we consider the implications of that story and look into the etymology of 'egg' and some of…
- Proto Indo-Europeans with Kevin Stroud of The History of English Podcast
This episode features a conversation I had with Kevin Stroud of the History of English Podcast at this year's virtual Intelligent Speech conference. We discussed reasons why the history of the Proto Indo-Europeans––the linguistic ancestors…
- Episode 87: Dead Ringer
The idiom 'dead ringer' comes down to us from horse-racing slang, but a widely believed folk etymology links the idiom's origins to being buried alive. In this episode, we debunk the myths and get down to the written evidence behind the em…
- Episode 86: Red Herring
The idiom 'red herring' is used to describe a distraction from the matter at hand. Literally, a 'red herring' is a kipper––that is, a smoked and salted sliced fish––but why would such a fish become an expression for a distraction? In this…
- Episode 85: The Proof Is in the Pudding
Of all places, why do we put the 'proof' in the 'pudding?' Like many idioms whose origins date back several centuries, the connection between the literal and figurative meanings of 'the proof is in the pudding' is no longer clear in Modern…
- Interview with Simon Horobin, Author of "Bagels, Bumf, and Buses"
In today's episode, I talk with Simon Horobin, Oxford professor and author of "Bagels, Bumf and Buses: A Day in the Life of the English Language," a book that explores the etymology of common words we encounter every day. In addition to di…
- Episode 84: Break a Leg
The etymology of 'break a leg' is disputed, but some theories hold up better than others. In today's episode, we look at a handful of plausible explanations for how 'break a leg' became theater slang for 'good luck' and also bust a few ety…
- Episode 83: Apple of the Eye
As we all know, the idiomatic meaning of 'apple of the eye' has nothing to do with apples. As it turns out, the origins of the idiom also have nothing to do with apples. In this episode, we look at how the English translation of an old Heb…
- Episode 82: In a Pickle
"In a pickle" is one of the oddest sounding idioms in English. It means "in a predicament or bad situation," but it's not clear what pickles have to do with anything. In this episode, we look at the origins of both the phrase and the word…
- Episode 81: Idioms (General Overview)
This episode begins a new series on the etymology of English idioms. In this general overview of idioms, we discuss why idioms are syntactically and semantically peculiar, how idioms emerge, how idioms fossilize archaic grammar, and more.
- Episode 80: Cannibal
The word 'cannibal' comes to us by way of a familiar historical figure: Christopher Columbus. The word is ultimately a Hispanicization of the name of an indigenous American group today known as the Caribs. Through Columbus' unreliable port…
- Episode 79: Philistine
In common usage, a 'philistine' is a derogatory term for an anti-intellectual materialist. The word derives from the ancient Middle Eastern Philistines, a people best known as an early geopolitical enemy of the Israelites in the Hebrew Bib…
- Episode 78: Bohemian
As a common noun, 'bohemian' describes an artistic, carefree lifestyle usually marked by poverty and unorthodoxy. The word is derived from Bohemia, a region in the modern Czech Republic, but its semantic connection to actual Czechs is near…
- Episode 77: Gothic
As someone who came of age during the late 90's, my first encounter with the word 'gothic' was through alternative music and fashion. However, the word was originally the name of a Germanic tribe most famous for sacking the Roman Empire. T…