The Finnish word for “to marry” also means “to fuck”. Apparently the meaning for fucking was the first one? And the couple gained the right to fuck once they had successfully completed a wedding ceremony.

It works about so that “I want to fuck the you” means “I want to marry you” and “I want to fuck you” without the definite form is an invitation to mere copulation.

Floors in the Middle Ages were dirt covered with straw for insulation and other reasons.

Threshold = thresh (straw) + hold (a piece of wood across the front doorway to stop the thresh from spilling out)

You might be familiar with the radio term “roger.” Per the FAA’s Pilot/Controller Glossary, it means “I have received all of your last transmission. It should not be used to answer a question requiring a yes or no answer.”

They want to make it VERY clear that roger does not mean “yes.” So why do we use the word “roger” to mean “acknowledged”? Because Americans in World War II.

First of all, radio was still a fairly new warfighting tool in the 1940’s. In a lot of cases, they still used Morse code tapped out by telegraphers on straight keys. Morse code was like the SMS of its day, it takes a long time to spell each letter out, so you end up with abbreviations, some of which really only make sense if you’re familiar with Morse. For example, you know the radio practice of saying “over” and “out?” In morse code, you use K (-.-) to mean “over” and KN (-.- -.) to mean “out.” There’s an entire list of “Q codes”, for example, you can tell someone to reduce their transmitter power by simply transmitting QRP (–.- .-. .–.). There’s one that means “what’s your barometric pressure?” because aviation. You’ll still sometimes hear “What’s QNH?” in aviation circles.

Most relevantly, a reply that simply means “I have received all of your last transmission” is simply abbreviated to R (.-.).

They also had AM voice mode radios. And now we get to talk about phonetic alphabets. We’ve all independently invented one at least once, talking to tech support on the phone and reading a serial number “One Three Four D as in Dog, Two, E as in Egg, Seven Eight one.” Because a bunch of letters sound the same when saying them out loud. You might be familiar with the modern one used by NATO, also required by the aviation world via ICAO. Starts out Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta etc. R in the modern one is Romeo. But NATO formed well after WWII.

The phonetic alphabet used during WWII by English speaking nations went Able Baker Charlie Dog Easy Fox etc etc. Peter Queen Roger Sugar etc etc Xray Yoke Zebra.

So we say “Roger” because in WWII the Morse code abbreviation for “received” was R and the letter R would be pronounced “Roger” on an AM transmitter, and even though the phonetic alphabet has moved on, the word remains in use with a specific definition.

I don’t think anyone has mentioned “helicopter” yet. It’s not heli and copter like you might think. It’s helico like helix meaning spiral and pter like pterodactyl meaning winged.

“Helicopter” isn’t heli - copter

It’s helico - pter.

Helico: Greek for helix or spiral.

Pter: Greek for wing, like a pterodactyl.

Thought of this while looking up where the term “bootleg” comes from. Turns out people used to conceal flasks of alcohol inside the leg of a tall boot to hide them from authorities during Prohibition.

Similar one for the term “shotgun” when you call the front passenger seat. That’s where the guy with the shotgun sat when goods and people were transported by horse-drawn wagons. Also, a funny sidenote: in Finnish language it’s commonly refered to as “pelkääjän paikka” which translates to “seat for the one being afraid”

Edit: Goodbye - God be with ye

The word “nice” used to mean “stupid.” It derives from the Latin “nescio” (translated: “I don’t know”) and carried over into old French. At some point, it came to be associated with generosity, the assumption being that someone stupid is too innocent or naive to be selfish.

It then got carried over into middle English, and the connotation for stupidity got dropped, making it so that the word meant “kind,” as opposed to “stupidly kind”

Buckaroo comes from the inability to pronounce/ the mispronunciation of the Spanish word for cowboy, Vaquero.

Denim= De Nîmes (from the city of Nîmes)

Jeans = Gênes , the French weird for Genoa.

The cotton weave, indigo dyed cloth originated in Genoa, and in France the main production centre was Nîmes.

So ‘denim jeans’ is both a tautology and a contradiction

‘Bully’ used to mean good friend. There’s a scene in Shakespeare (who else?) where he talks about someone sending his bully boys to teach someone a lesson, meaning he sent his close friends. But, over time, people took it to mean his thuggish friends and so the word’s meaning shifted.

The word “standard,” meaning “level of quality” or “rule” evolved from the physical battle flag on a pole, as in “standard bearer.” So for things like standardized lengths of measurement, you could say “we follow the king’s standard for what a foot is,” which was a metaphor for following the king’s rule on what that length was. That further stretched into a level of quality or conduct that needed to be achieved.

This might be obvious to some, but I only recently realized. A standard was originally a flag on a poll, meant to be visible across a battlefield as a direction for all to follow.

“Son of a gun” is from when sailing ships would come into port. The sex workers would row out to them and have sex with an entire gun crew.

When the kid was born they didn’t know who the father was so he was a “son of a gun” aka a bastard.

I’ve always found it fun how in Germanic (and Romance) languages, we still honor the old gods when it comes to the days of the week. Like wednesday being “Wodan’s/Odin’s day” and thursday being “Thor’s day”. I wonder how many devout christians realize this.

I also think the etymology of the German word “Buchstaben” (letter, as in a,b,c) is pretty interesting. It literally means “beech rod” and goes back all the way to Germanic tribespeople carving runes into rods made from beechwood.

In English, the words for many animals (chicken, cow, sheep, deer, pig) are derived from proto-germanic, while the word for their meat (poultry, beef, mutton, venison, pork) is French derived.

Bonus: A good chunk of river names are just “River” in the local language. So many River Rivers from newcomers adopting the river names, not knowing it just means “river”

The abbreviation ‘lbs’ for ‘pounds’ comes from the Roman ‘libre pondo’ meaning ‘a pound by weight’.

This is also the reason the symbol for Libra in the zodiac is scales (Libra is the only sign represented by an inanimate object).

I just learnt this today, and I can’t believe I never noticed before now that ‘lbs’ for ‘pounds’ is weird. I always just mentally glossed over it.