22 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2024
    1. Isidore of Seville [7th century CE] (Etymologies, Book 12, 7:26): The pelican [pelicanus] is an Egyptian bird inhabiting the solitary places of the river Nile, whence it takes its name, for Egypt is called canopos. It is reported, if it may be true, that this bird kills its offspring, mourns them for three days, and finally wounds itself and revives its children by sprinkling them with its own blood. - [Barney, Lewis, et. al. translation]

      Despite the now commonly accepted etymology of pelican stemming from the Greek pelekys or pelekus meaning "ax", a referent to the bird's large beak, in Etymologies (book 12, 7:26) Isidore of Seville says it "takes its name for Egypt which is called canopos."

      question: There is a thing called a canoptic jar (from Egypt), is it possible that trade via these jars caused the ancients to associate Egypt with them, or is there a separate etymology at play?

  2. Oct 2023
    1. Centuries ago in Wales, the young lover would also give gifts of sweets or cakes; but they would also give a special, more personal gift to the object of their desire, the Welsh Love Spoon. Some of the early love spoons can be seen on display at the Welsh Folk Museum in Cardiff. There is even one that dates back to 1667. The young man would spend hours carving the lovespoon with his own hands, in the hope that the girl would accept it. If the girl accepted the spoon, she would demonstrate her interest in him and they would commence on a relationship, which is the origin of the word 'spooning'.

      Dating back to the late 1600s, the Welsh tradition of carving a lovespoon for the eye of one's affection is the origin of the word "spooning".

      via https://www.cadwyngifts.com/pages/information-about-love-spoons

  3. Sep 2023
    1. R.U.R.: Rossum’s Universal Robots, drama in three acts by Karel Čapek, published in 1920 and performed in 1921. This cautionary play, for which Čapek invented the word robot (derived from the Czech word for forced labour), involves a scientist named Rossum who discovers the secret of creating humanlike machines. He establishes a factory to produce and distribute these mechanisms worldwide. Another scientist decides to make the robots more human, which he does by gradually adding such traits as the capacity to feel pain. Years later, the robots, who were created to serve humans, have come to dominate them completely.
    1. discard

      etymology?

      from card as in card catalogue? thus dis-card or un-card, remove a card and throw it away?

      apparently attested in the 16th century from card games...

      late 16th century (originally in the sense ‘reject (a playing card’)): from dis- (expressing removal) + the noun card

      though one should keep in mind that playing cards were also used as early index cards for their small functionality

  4. Mar 2023
    1. The name Susan is indirectly related to the Demotic word for water lily.
    2. Ebony, the dark wood that was traded down the Nile from Nubia (present-day Sudan), also comes from Demotic roots.
    3. The language lives on today in words such as adobe, which came from the Egyptian word for brick. The word moved through Demotic, on to Arabic and eventually to Spain during the time of Islamic domination there
    1. "the two Re'swhich come forth and shine upon earth: the Sun ofEgypt" (the king) "and that which is in the sky"(pp. 922-92

      Did our word "ray" (as in ray of sunshine) derive from the ancient Egyptian word for their god "Ra"?

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    Annotators

    1. Stroebe, Lilian L. “Die Stellung Des Mittelhochdeutschen Im College-Lehrplan.” Monatshefte Für Deutsche Sprache Und Pädagogik, 1924, 27–36. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44327729

      The place of Middle High German in the college curriculum<br /> Lilian L. Stroebe<br /> Monthly magazines for German language and pedagogy (1924), pp. 27-36

      ... of course to the reading material. Especially in the field of etymology it is easy to stimulate the pupils' independence. For years I have had each of my students create an etymological card dictionary with good success, and I see that at the end of the course they have this card box ...

    1. Isuwans

      Isuwa (transcribed Išuwa and sometimes rendered Ishuwa) was the ancient Hittite name for one of its neighboring Anatolian kingdoms to the east. Isuwa is the origin of our word 'Asia'.

  5. Jan 2023
  6. Nov 2022
    1. fulgence LANGUAGE FAMILY: indo-european > italic > latinORIGIN: latin NAME ROOT: FULGĕO > FULGENS / FULGēRE > FULGENTIUSMEANING: This name derives from the Latin “fulgĕo > fulgens / fulgēre > Fulgentius”, meaning “illustrious, beautiful, famous, shine brightly, glitter, sparkle”. Fabius Planciades Fulgentius was a Latin writer of late antiquity. Four extant works are commonly attributed to him, as well as a possible fifth which some scholars include in compilations with much reservation. His mytho-graphic work was greatly admired and highly influential throughout much of the medieval period, but is viewed with little favor today.

      in relation to the character in the satire Penguin Island by Anatole France who dies by zettelkasten

      Naturally a tapir is the nocturnal hoofed mammal with a stout body, sturdy limbs, and a short flexible proboscis, native to the forests of tropical America and Malaysia.

      So the name Fulgence Tapir is essentially "a sparkling foraging pig".

  7. Oct 2022
  8. Aug 2022
    1. The term "stigmergy" was introduced by French biologist Pierre-Paul Grassé in 1959 to refer to termite behavior. He defined it as: "Stimulation of workers by the performance they have achieved." It is derived from the Greek words στίγμα stigma "mark, sign" and ἔργον ergon "work, action", and captures the notion that an agent’s actions leave signs in the environment, signs that it and other agents sense and that determine and incite their subsequent actions.[4][5]

      Theraulaz, Guy (1999). "A Brief History of Stigmergy". Artificial Life. 5 (2): 97–116. doi:10.1162/106454699568700. PMID 10633572. S2CID 27679536.

  9. May 2022
    1. Blackwood Magazine most likely introduced the term in 1819, but Edgar Allan Poe popularized it some 25 years later with some of his published material: Marginalia. Since then, authors have had varying degrees of success creating their own collections of published marginalia. Among them is Walter Benjamin, who struggled after 13 years of research, leaving behind The Arcades Project: "the theater," he called it, "of all my struggles and all my ideas"

      Blackwood Magazine most likely introduced the term marginalia in 1819. Edgar Allen Poe popularized the term with some of his published material entitled Marginalia.


      What other (popular) published examples of marginalia exist?

      Source for the Blackwood Magazine assertion?

  10. Mar 2022
    1. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/idle_hands_are_the_devil%27s_workshop

      Proverbs 16:27 "Scoundrels concoct evil, and their speech is like a scorching fire." (Oxford, NSRV, 5th Edition) is translated in the King James version as "An ungodly man diggeth up evil: and in his lips there is as a burning fire." The Living Bible (1971) translates this section as "Idle hands are the devil’s workshop; idle lips are his mouthpiece."

      The verse may have inspired St. Jerome to write "fac et aliquid operis, ut semper te diabolus inveniat occupatum" (translation: "engage in some occupation, so that the devil may always find you busy.”) This was repeated in The Canterbury Tales which may have increased its popularity.

  11. Feb 2019
    1. propensities

      From Latin propensus, past participle of propendere "incline to, hang forward, hang down, weigh over," and is defined as "an often intense natural inclination or preference"

  12. Jan 2019
    1. Odium philologicum

      Latin for "hatred of/to the history of literature and words?" Not 100% sure on this.

    2. infra dig

      From the Latin phrase infra dignitatem meaning beneath one; demeaning. First used by Sir Walter Scott in his 1825 novel Redgauntlet