‘Spam,’ meaning “unsolicited usually commercial messages,” comes from Monty Python.

Well, before that, ‘Spam’ was only a canned meat product.

Still is.

But in 1970…
🧵⬇️ "Monty Python’s Flying Circus" had a sketch where a group of restaurant Vikings aggressively sing a song about "Spam"...

...over and over until they drown out all other conversations.

Why is it called ‘pickleball’?

In 1965, Joel Pritchard of Washington State was bored on vacation.

So, he and his friends made up a game using a badminton court, table tennis paddles, and a perforated plastic ball.
🧵⬇️ His wife, Joan, was an avid rowing fan.

In rowing, a ‘pickle boat’ is a competition in which leftover crew members are thrown together on a team.

Since this new game incorporated “leftover” elements of similar sports, she suggested…

'pickle ball.’

Hey ding-dongs, let’s have a chit-chat about Ablaut reduplication.

If you have three words, the order usually goes 'I-A-O.'
-tic-tac-toe

If there are only two words, ‘I’ is the first and the second is either ‘A’ or ‘O.’
-click-clack
-King-Kong This seems to be a rule we all just… know?

It’s the reason why these don’t feel quite right…
-hop-hip
-raffriff
-spot-spit
-flop-flip
-zag-zig
-Ross Rick

Acoustic guitars used to just be called ‘guitars.’

Then, we invented electric guitars. Oh no.

Which meant saying ‘guitar’ wasn’t clear enough.

So 'guitars' became 'acoustic guitars.'

‘Acoustic guitar’ is an example of a ‘retronym.’

🧵⬇️ A 'retronym' is a term consisting of a noun and a modifier which specifies the original meaning of the noun.

Many retronyms have come about due to technological advances.

-cease and desist
-null and void
-aid and abet
-free and clear
-ways and means

Why is law stuff like this always two words?

These are called ‘legal doublets’ and we can once again blame the Normans.

🧵⬇️ Post 1066, the language of nobility was French, and the language of the working class was English.

Since both English and French speakers needed to understand legal matters, a word from each language was often used to aid understanding:
⬇️

Some words go together like jelly and peanut butter… wait, that sounds super weird.

A pair of words that is used in a fixed order in an idiomatic expression is called an ‘irreversible binomial.’

‘Peanut butter and jelly’ is an example of an irreversible binomial.
🧵⬇️ The order of these expressions is so fixed that the phrase becomes a standard part of the vocabulary.

Also, there isn’t ONE reason that determines order, but we do encounter some patterns.

Noncount nouns are words that don’t have usual plural forms.

These are words like ‘sand’ or ‘butter.’

They don’t use indefinite articles like ‘a’ or ‘an’ and take singular verbs.

“The butter is melting.”

“Sand blew in his face.” The idea is that this kind of word notionally cannot be counted.

Even though sand is made up of many tiny parts, when we say “sand,” as when we say “water,” we mean an uncountable mass.

You wouldn’t say “a few sand” or “I need many water.”

We don’t mean to sound possessive, but let’s talk about how to make last names plural.

The plurals of last names are just like the plurals of most nouns. They typically get formed by adding -s.

Jill and Tim Smith→ the Smiths
the Clarence family→ the Clarences If the name already ends in s or z, the plural is formed by adding -es.

the Fernandez family → the Fernandezes
Mr. and Mrs. Jones → the Joneses

For Names that end in y, you only need to add an s to make them plural

the Daley family → the Daleys

The plural of ‘attorney general’ is ‘attorneys general.’

This is because ‘attorney’ is the noun and ‘general’ is the adjective.

It’s not an attorney that’s a general in the military.

It’s an attorney with the most general jurisdiction. Words where the adjective appears after the noun it modifies are called ‘postpositive adjectives.’

notary public
poet laureate
professor emeritus
court-martial

These words all seem….official.

Why?

Mayday = HELP ME

May Day = Help me... pick these flowers ‘Mayday’ first came into English in 1923.

There was a lot of air traffic between England and France in those days and both parties wanted to find a good distress signal that everyone would understand.

They could just use 'S.O.S.' - right?

Well…

For no reason at all, here is a guide to British noble titles:

‘Prince’ comes from the Latin word that literally means “one who takes the first part.”

It shares its ultimate Latin root with words that denote firstness, like ‘principal’ and ‘prime’ and ‘primary.’ By tradition, only those born into the royal family can use ‘prince’ or ’princess.’

Even though many people refer to ‘Princess Diana,’ the title of ‘princess’ should properly come after her name, since she was not born into the royal family.

“Diana, Princess of Wales”

Rudolph gets all the love so let’s talk about the names of Santa’s other reindeer.

dasher | noun | one that dashes
dancer | noun | one that dances
prancer | noun | one that walks or moves in a spirited manner

Ok, those three are easy to understand. Now, we get to ‘Vixen.’ ‘vixen’ is a noun and has 3 senses.

1. a female fox
2. a shrewish, ill-tempered woman
3. a sexually attractive woman

Ummm, what’s going on here, Santa?

‘Hello’ has only been in use for about the last 150 years.

An older term used for greeting or salutation is 'hail,' which dates back to the Middle Ages.

This word is related to others that originally meant ‘health,’ such as ‘hale,’ ‘health,’ and ‘whole.’ Several variants of ‘hail’ are recorded, including ‘hollo’, ‘hallo,’ ‘halloa,’ and ‘holler.’

‘Hello’ was first recorded in the early 1800s, and was originally used to attract attention or express surprise.

“Well, hello! What do we have here?” twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

What the $%&# is a ‘grawlix’???

The ‘grawlix’ is the character or series of characters that often appear in place of profanity—the visual equivalent of bleeping out a word. The term ‘grawlix’ is credited to the late cartoonist Mort Walker (1923-2018), creator of Beetle Bailey. twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

You probably learned about homonyms in school: words that are pronounced or spelled the same but differ in meaning.

bear (animal)
bear (carry)

But did you know there are actually two kinds of homonyms: homophones and homographs.

Let’s dew this. twitter.com/i/web/status/1… Homophones are words THAT SOUND ALIKE but could be different in meaning or derivation or spelling.

to/too/two
rose/rows
one/won
berry/bury
knot/not
guessed/guest
bread/bred
would/wood twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Moira Rose Vocabulary

pettifogging | noun | quibbling over trifles obsidian | noun | a dark natural glass formed by the cooling of molten lava

'Portmanteau' is a portmanteau. ⬆️ a word or part of a word made by combining the spellings and meanings of two or more other words or word parts (such as smog from smoke and fog) twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

"IRREGARDLESS" HAS BEEN AROUND SINCE 1795. ITS INCLUSION IN THE DICTIONARY IS NOT A SIGN OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE FALLING TO PIECES, OR PROOF OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM FAILING, NOR IS IT THE WORK OF CURSED MILLENNIALS. IT JUST MEANS A LOT OF PEOPLE USE IT TO MEAN "REGARDLESS." FWIW the reason we define irregardless is very simple: it meets our criteria for inclusion. This word has been used by a large number of people (millions) for a long time (over two hundred years) with a specific and identifiable meaning ("regardless").

Hey ding-dongs, let’s have a chit-chat about Ablaut reduplication.

If you have three words, the order usually goes 'I-A-O.'
tic-tac-toe

If there are only two words, ‘I’ is the first and the second is either ‘A’ or ‘O.’
click-clack
King-Kong twitter.com/i/web/status/1… This seems to be a rule we all just… know?

It’s the reason why these don’t feel quite right…
hop-hip
raffriff
spot-spit
flop-flip
zag-zig
Ross Rick twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

A Pennywise is a penny earned. (Bozo did the dub.)

Congratu-BLEEPING-lations!

It’s time we had a little talk about your use of expletive infixation.

‘Expletive infixation’ is the linguistic term for profanity inserted into a word for emphasis.

(For this thread, we’ll use 'BLEEPING,' but feel free to substitute another word.) Why do we say ‘fan-BLEEPING-tastic’ but not ‘fantas-BLEEPING-tic’?

The main reason, linguists believe, is that the curse word comes before the syllable that bears the primary stress. (The ‘tas’ is stressed in ‘fantastic.’)