A Russian friend of mine told me that "Terrible" is a common, well nigh universal, mistranslation for the nickname of Ivan IV Vasilyevich (Russian: Иван Васильевич; 25 August 1530 – 28 March [O.S. 18 March] 1584). He says that a closer translation would be "Enraged". The English word terrible is usually used to translate the Russian word […]
I've never heard of this "Chinese" proverb, but some American friends are asking if I can tell them the original proverb in Chinese. I can't tell them the original proverb in Chinese, but I can tell them about its origins in Japanese.
I'm often surprised by the number of terms in modern Japanese that have their roots in ancient Buddhist usage. Some of the most common ones are introduced in this article by Brendan Craine from The Japan Times (2/2/23): "The Buddhist terms that find their way into everyday conversation" A good example is aisatsu あいさつ / […]
In this post, I will focus on the adversative passive usage of nèijuǎn 内卷 ("involution"). Etymology Calque of English involution, from its Latin roots. This sense was coined in Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia (1963) by Clifford Geertz, as an antonym of evolution, where Geertz observed Javanese and Balinese rice farmers […]
From Michael Carasik: I have been wondering whether Gandhi’s “ahimsa” can be related to Hebrew חמס, the reason (per Gen 6:11) that God brought the Flood. The OED has already assured me that ahimsa is a- (“non”) + himsa, which seems promising. Michael asks whether this connection is plausible. Though Sanskrit is an Indo-European language and Hebrew […]
Len Leverson sent me his unpublished paper titled "O 'pão' Português Conquista o Mundo" about how the Portuguese word for bread spread across the globe. That got me to thinking about how many words of Portuguese origin are in Japanese. I'll focus on "pão" more squarely in a moment, but first just a quick list […]
I've always associated the phrase eke out with cases where what's eked out is something good. That's the implication of the Merriam-Webster entry: 1: to make up for the deficiencies of : SUPPLEMENT eked out his income by getting a second job 2: to make (a supply) last by economy And similarly from the Wiktionary […]
Upon seeing that word for the first time, I had only the vaguest idea of what it meant, though I suspected that it was closely related to the dog breed name: schnauzer (n.) breed of terrier with a bearded muzzle, 1923, from German Schnauzer, literally "growler," from schnauzen "to snarl, growl," from Schnauze "snout, muzzle," […]
Article by Vivian Salama and Jared Malsin in WSJ (11/27/22) Turkey’s Push to Change How the World Pronounces its Name Causes a Flap In part weary of bird comparisons, the country wants everyone to say ‘Tour-key-yeh.’ The rebranding has been a head-scratcher for many people. In truth, I don't blame them, especially not since so […]
[Preface: scores of versions of the Wawa logo here. Take a look before plunging in to the post.] Brother Joe told me the good news that Wawa stores are coming to my home state of Ohio! Wawa's are great! Anyone who went to Penn would know this because their stores are near the campus and […]
I've always pronounced it as rhyming with "thanks", but Wiktionary makes it sound more like "monks" in German, Dutch, and UK English. "Manx" is the English exonym for the language whose endonym "is Gaelg/Gailck, which shares the same etymology as the word 'Gaelic', as do the endonyms of its sister languages Irish (Gaeilge; Gaoluinn, Gaedhlag […]
The word rein, which the OED glosses as "A long narrow strap, frequently of leather, attached to the bridle or bit of a horse or other animal on either side of the head and used by a rider or driver to control and guide the animal", was apparently borrowed into English from French a millennium […]
I played college basketball for Dartmouth for four years. That means I had ample opportunity to play in Penn's hallowed Palestra. All of the Ivy League schools had unique, distinctive gymnasia, and they remain sharply etched in my mind. But the Palestra was something else altogether, as though it belonged in a different league, a […]