An anonymous correspondent asked: Are these actually related words, or just homonyms? p. 127 of Jack Weatherford, Genghis Khan and the Quest for God: How the World's Greatest Conqueror Gave Us Religious Freedom: Male shamans were treated with cautious respect, but they evoked suspicion and even disgust. As one saying put it, “the worst of men become […]
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There's a university in Wales with this name: Evidently "prifysgol" means "university". Etymology From prif- (“chief”) + ysgol (“school”). Noun prifysgol f (plural prifysgolion) university
From Shawn Zhang's Twitter account: Xi Jinping mispronounced the name of Tibetan Epic King Gesar as "King Sager" 习近平把“格萨尔王”说成”萨格尔王”。 pic.twitter.com/okiAEgraRP — Shawn Zhang (@shawnwzhang) March 20, 2018
[This is a guest post by Stephen Goranson.] Though it's generally agreed that "on the fritz" means, more or less, "in an unsatisfactory or defective state or condition" (Oxford English Dictionary), there is no agreement on its etymology. Some currently associate "fritz" with a sound from a malfunctioning electric machine, but the early uses of […]
At the conclusion of "Barking roosters and crowing dogs" (2/18/18), I promised a more philologically oriented post to celebrate the advent of the lunar year of the dog. This is it. Concurrently, it is part of this long running series on Old Sinitic and Indo-European comparative reconstructions: “Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions” (3/8/16) […]
Is it my imagination, or has there been a drop in GNP (Gross National Peeving) across the Anglophone world? I'm not seeing nearly the volume of "Angry linguistic mobs with torches" that I (think I) did a decade ago. So the recently viral story about this sign on the door of the Continental bar makes […]
From March through July of 2016, we had a long-running series of posts comparing words in Indo-European and in Old Sinitic (OS), See especially the first item in this series, and don't miss the comments to all of the posts: “Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions” (3/8/16) “Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions, […]
Forwarded by Alex Baumans, an email advertisement from Legend Footwear in London — "RESTOCK YOUR SHOEDROBE FOR WINTER!"
"Japanese start-up helping ‘delinquents’ compete against college graduates for city jobs with new internship: The company Hassyadai has so far helped 100 youth from outside Tokyo to land employment", SCMP (12/2/17): Dubbed the “Yankee internship”, the programme, whose participants range in age from 16 to 22, is unique in that it includes the category of […]
Given the bevy of shamed politicians and celebrities who have been paraded before the public in recent weeks, it may be of interest that the word for "sexual harassment" in Chinese is quite a colorful one: (Source)
James Wimberley notes that, among the recent additions to the Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party, is this section: The basic line of the Communist Party of China in the primary stage of socialism is to lead all the people of China together in a self-reliant and pioneering effort, making economic development the central task, […]