It’s estimated that we talk spherical 16,000 words a day, but own you ever considered the place they came from?
Etymology exhibits that language has an a chortle if no longer downright chortle-inducing sense of humor at events. Listed below are factual a number of examples of bizarre word origins.
Dude
This would maybe be a word that has certainly performed a 180-diploma flip: in the 1880s, as a replace of referring to a laid-abet man, it described one overconcerned with his look.
Freelance
Credited to Sir Walter Scott’s 1819 new Ivanhoe, this modified into a title for a warrior who fought for whoever modified into the absolute top bidder (presumably the use of whatever free lance modified into accessible for battle).
Genius
In fourteenth-century Rome, this moniker belonged to an person’s guardian spirit—a pressure that watched over them from birth and guided them by existence.
Muscle
Musculus, the Latin word muscle comes from, literally means “small mouse,” which is becoming since this tissue modified into thought to observe delight in the creature provocative under the pores and skin.
Nice
Whether you watch at the Latin or French foundation of this word, it modified into certainly as soon as intended as a slur. Amongst its plethora of earlier meanings: silly, careless, clumsy, ignorant, and standard.
In disagreement, “bully” began as a synonym for “sweetheart.”
Nightmare
Essentially essentially based totally on fourteenthcentury German and Slavic superstitions, the “evening mare” modified into a malevolent feminine spirit who resulted in suffocation and wicked needs in the route of slumber.
Sahara
This title comes from the Arabic word for desert, so whereas you speak “Sahara desert,” you’re literally announcing “Desolate tract desert.”
Sarcasm
Sarcasm is identified as a biting obtain of humor for a reason: one translation of its Greek foundation word, sarkazein, is to chunk or strip off flesh as an animal would.
Foolish
Within the occasion you were silly in the 1200s, when this term first started being accepted, you were likely considered to be chuffed or harmless, which doesn’t sound very silly.
