Well, English may not have anything like a Royal Academy, but it does seem to have a LOT of popularity contests. Dictionary.com has published its choice for Word of the Year:
http://hotword.dictionary.com/woty/?t
Showing posts with label word origins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label word origins. Show all posts
1.07.2011
9.07.2010
How high can a dead cat bounce?
Here's one for you advanced-level business students: Today's "Guardian" has an amusing piece about how English business newspapers and television often use animals to provide imagery when they talk about the stock market. Sometimes, it's easy to understand what they mean; sometimes, it's confusing even for English speakers.
http://tinyurl.com/277xmfp
FYI: A dead cat bounce is the idea that anything (a stock market, a dead cat) will bounce (=come back into the air) if it hits the ground hard enough, and from a high place.
http://tinyurl.com/277xmfp
FYI: A dead cat bounce is the idea that anything (a stock market, a dead cat) will bounce (=come back into the air) if it hits the ground hard enough, and from a high place.
6.12.2010
...and why do Americans call it soccer?
I confess: I had to look this one up.
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary (http://www.etymonline.com/), the word soccer is a shorter form of "association", from the name of the Football Association. Speakers took "assoc", turned it into "soc", and added the informal "-er" suffix (you can also hear this in the way some people will call rubgy "rugger").
Football (which dates back to the early 15th century) is fairly obvious: you have a foot, you have a ball. Games like these date back to the Roman times; I like how the Online Etymology Dictionary points out that "[b]all-kicking games date back to the Roman legions, at least, but the sport seems to have risen to a national obsession in England, c.1630." (Some things never change.)
Hooligan dates back more than one hundred years:
...of unknown origin, first found in British newspaper police-court reports in the summer of 1898, almost certainly from the surname "Houlihan", supposedly from a lively family of that name in London (who figured in music hall songs of the decade). Internationalized 20c. in communist rhetoric as Rusian khuligan, opprobrium [=criticism] for "scofflaws, political dissenters, etc."
For more information on word origins connection with football/soccer/whatever you call it, look here: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=soccer&searchmode=none.
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary (http://www.etymonline.com/), the word soccer is a shorter form of "association", from the name of the Football Association. Speakers took "assoc", turned it into "soc", and added the informal "-er" suffix (you can also hear this in the way some people will call rubgy "rugger").
Football (which dates back to the early 15th century) is fairly obvious: you have a foot, you have a ball. Games like these date back to the Roman times; I like how the Online Etymology Dictionary points out that "[b]all-kicking games date back to the Roman legions, at least, but the sport seems to have risen to a national obsession in England, c.1630." (Some things never change.)
Hooligan dates back more than one hundred years:
...of unknown origin, first found in British newspaper police-court reports in the summer of 1898, almost certainly from the surname "Houlihan", supposedly from a lively family of that name in London (who figured in music hall songs of the decade). Internationalized 20c. in communist rhetoric as Rusian khuligan, opprobrium [=criticism] for "scofflaws, political dissenters, etc."
For more information on word origins connection with football/soccer/whatever you call it, look here: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=soccer&searchmode=none.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)