Language Log

From Barbara Phillips Long, in reference to yesterday's Guardian story "Spinal Tap II: The End Continues review – rockers return for mockusequel of pin-sharp laughs and melancholy" ("Enter the Tapocalypse as Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Rob Reiner return in a still-funny, cameo-studded telling of the hapless band’s final gig"):

The word videotaping is still often used to mean "video recording", even though what's meant is recording digital video to a  solid-state storage device, most often on a phone — video recording to tape has gone the way of buggy whips.

This word caught my attention on the news this morning.  It was said to be a gigantic dust/sandstorm that was passing through the central Arizona area.  As soon as I heard the sound of the word, with a probable triliteral Semitic root and the fact that it was some sort of sandstorm, I thought that it was most likely Arabic.  And indeed it is.

There's a big fuss and furor over the logo change at Cracker Barrel:

(Since we have previously had lively discussions on subjects related to today's topic, I will publish this essay as is, but with the admonition that it is for advanced Siniticists, though naturally all Language Log readers are welcome to partake.)

[This is a guest post by Kirinputra]

I was (routinely) digging into the etymology of Taioanese U-LÓNG, which, like UDON, comes from Japanese うどん, and it turns out that うどん is cognate to WONTON, Cantonese 雲吞 (of c.), & Mandarin 馄饨.

The 廣韻 has 餛飩; so does Cikoski, with the gloss K[IND OF] DUMPLING. So the word is pretty ancient. 集韻 has it written 䐊肫, apparently. Using that as a search term, I found an article on your blog, but the commenters were generally unaware that 餛飩 had this alternate form in the medieval book language. (Of c., the person that wrote 䐊肫湯 may not have known either.)

A recent Elle Cordova video:

Since I wrote The True History of Tea (2009; now available in a number of foreign languages and coming out in pb on 1/27/26), I've been a tea aficianado and connoisseur, so I was stunned when five days ago I learned of the existence of two types that are completely new to me.

The first is called Adeni tea, and I was privileged to taste it at Haraz Coffee House that recently opened next to Penn.  It is run by Yemenis, who really know their coffee and serve mouth-watering pastries, many of which I had never encountered before.

I already had a good impression of Yemeni food purveyors when I stopped at a Country Market by the side of Old Route 30 in Svensen WA run by a mother and her son, though I didn't have any hot, freshly brewed tea that time.

This is an odd-looking word that I encounter fairly frequently, especially in my publishing ventures.  Since I don't understand how / why "queue" should be pronounced like "cue", which is also a variant spelling for the same word, I'm especially cautious about "queue" when I approach it.  Moreover, since I'm steeped in pinyin, I'm tempted to pronounce "queue" as "chyueyue" (!).  Consequently, I always have to slow down when I spell / type it:  "q-u-e-u-e", which I seldom have to do with other words except "Cincinnati", which I still haven't mastered.

Other than "its / it's", "queue" is probably the most frequently misspelled word I know of, even among educated persons.

I also am somewhat perplexed why "queue" means both "line" and "tail".

The word "queue" is used to mean a line, particularly in British English, because of its etymological origins. "Queue" comes from the French word "queue," meaning "tail," which in turn comes from the Latin word "cauda," also meaning "tail". This connection to "tail" makes sense when visualizing a line of people or objects, as they often form a linear arrangement reminiscent of a tail. The term "queue" is also used in computing to refer to a data structure where items are processed in a first-in, first-out (FIFO) manner, similar to how people are served in a line.

(AIO)

More Julesy:

Why 50% of modern Chinese vocabulary was made in Japan

I want to thank Jonathan Silk (comment here) for pushing Popeye to further heights and deeper depths in our understanding of his favorite vegetable.  We're not "finiched" with spinach yet.

Now it's getting very interesting and confusing (Armenian is creeping in):

palak

English

Etymology

From Hindi पालक (pālak), from Sanskrit पालक्या (pālakyā).

palak (uncountable)

1. 1. (India, cooking) Spinach or similar greens (including Amaranthus species and Chenopodium album).

In "Rococo" (7/6/2025), I quoted from Charles Carr's 1965 paper "TWO WORDS IN ART HISTORY II. ROCOCO" his evidence that the word rococo began as way of denigrating certain kinds of out-of-fashion ugliness. Jonathan Smith noted in the comments that "baroque itself was first a(n) (disparaging) epithet", and I quoted the OED's endorsement of that idea, though without going into the whole "an irregular pearl is like a wart" background.

But in a parallel 1965 article, "TWO WORDS IN ART HISTORY I. BAROQUE", Charles Carr lays out three etymological theories about baroque, after sparing us "fantastic etymologies to be found in certain eighteenth-century dictionaries".

[This is a guest post from Christopher Atwood]

Building on observations of Andras Rona-Tas (Tibeto-Mongolica, pp. 213-14), one can observe a basic division in Mongolian words for cultivated plants. They divide into two types: 1) words for grains and grain cultivation; and 2) words for fruits and vegetables.

Words in the first category (tariya "grain" buudai "wheat," arbai "barley," shish "sorghum," am "millet," budaa "grain," anjisu "plow" mill "teerem" etc) are consistent throughout the Mongolic family, and have great time depth — most of them are not obviously loan words from any other language (some have Turkic cognates, but at a considerable time depth).

[This is a guest post by Gábor Parti]