{"id":3917,"date":"2012-04-21T06:17:24","date_gmt":"2012-04-21T11:17:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=3917"},"modified":"2012-04-21T06:33:58","modified_gmt":"2012-04-21T11:33:58","slug":"poetical-etymologies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=3917","title":{"rendered":"Poetical etymologies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/wondermark.com\/829\/\">Wondermark #829<\/a>, 4\/20, \"In which pepper is explained\":<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/WondermarkPepper.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Click to embiggen\" src=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/WondermarkPepper.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The mouse-over text is<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">\"How often does somebody actually WONDER ABOUT ETYMOLOGY in my PRESENCE?? You GOTTA give me this!!\"<\/span><\/p>\n<p>There's at least one significant anachronism in the faux-Victorian setting: as far as I know, degrees in \"linguistics\" were not offered anywhere in the English-speaking world until after WWII.<\/p>\n<p>Needless to say, <em>pep<\/em> is in fact a shortened form of <em>pepper<\/em>, which in turn, according to the OED, is<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\">&lt; classical Latin <em>piper<\/em>, a loanword &lt; Indo-Aryan (as is ancient Greek \u03c0\u03ad\u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03b9 ); compare Sanskrit <em>pippal\u012b<\/em> long pepper.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>By \"long pepper\" the OED refers to<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\">Any of various forms of capsicum, esp. <em>Capsicum annuum<\/em> var. <em>annuum<\/em>. Originally (chiefly with distinguishing word): any variety of the <em>C. annuum<\/em> Longum group, with elongated fruits having a hot, pungent taste, the source of cayenne, chilli powder, paprika, etc., or of the perennial <em>C. frutescens<\/em>, the source of Tabasco sauce.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>And my understanding is that the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Capsicum\">capsicum genus<\/a> is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hort.purdue.edu\/newcrop\/proceedings1996\/v3-479.html\">native to the Americas, and did not exist in Europe, Africa, or Asia<\/a> in pre-Columbian times. So a Sanskrit word for \"long pepper\" is either a modern importation into Sankrit, or else a modern extension of a word that actually referred to something else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wondermark #829, 4\/20, \"In which pepper is explained\":<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linguistics-in-the-funny-papers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}