English is said to be one of the hardest languages to learn if it's not your native tongue, and for good reason. The words we use are a confusing jumble of what must seem like nonsense to non-native speakers. Why doesn't laughter rhyme with massacre? Why does the word "set" have 430 ways Usage according to the dictionary? You can drive yourself crazy trying to figure it out. Even looking at the origins of words can be confusing, as many words come from places you might not think.
10. Credit sharks are not named after sea creatures.
A loan shark sounds potentially dangerous even if you have no idea what the term means. And even if you do know, it still sounds dangerous. Simply put, a loan shark is someone who will lend you money under very unfavorable terms. There may be high interest rates or dangerous penalties for late payments. It usually means something illegal, like breaking your legs. You want to avoid a loan shark.
The connection to sharks seems obvious. A shark is a marine predator, a moneylender is a financial predator. Oddly enough, the moneylender doesn't get its name from this. They have nothing in common with sea creatures, and, come to that, the animal named shark only shares this name by coincidence.
Sharks were once actually called sea dogs . There are also species we call dogfish, which are small sharks. But pawnbrokers get their name from the word "shark," which has long meant a deceitful or dishonest person. This name predates the pawnbrokers and may have Dutch or German origins, such as the word "« schorck »", meaning scoundrel.
9. The shells were named after geese.
If you know much about boats, you know about barnacles. These tiny crustaceans form on ship hulls, as well as rocks and almost anything else in the water, and can accumulate until whatever they cover becomes nearly invisible. There are several species, and some are even edible.
In Europe there is a bird known as barnacle goose , which is a bit like a Canada goose and it is no coincidence that it bears this name.
Geese were not named after crustaceans, but the opposite happened . Barnacles were named after geese because back then, people thought geese descended from barnacles. They were goslings. Go figure.
Geese come in black, white, and gray. Shells attached to wood and other floating debris were found attached to a small gray-black paw , very similar to a goose's neck. And that's all it took. It all dates back to the 11th century.
8. The Caesarean section was not named after Caesar.
One common and easy-to-understand etymological myth is that Julius Caesar was the origin of what we know today as the Caesarean section, or C-section. It's easy to believe, as the names are very similar, and there's a common story that Caesar was born by C-section. Why not name him after him? Well, for one thing, he in no way was not the first child born thus, as was known, among others, in Hindu, Chinese, Egyptian and Roman texts. There was even a law on books before his birth regarding their implementation. Furthermore, it's quite possible that Caesar wasn't even born by Caesarean section.
In Caesar's time, cesarean sections were most often performed to save a child when the mother was dead or about to die, as she likely would not survive the procedure. But Caesar's mother lived for many years.
So why the name Caesar? It probably comes from the word caedare , meaning "to cut." Pliny the Elder even suggested that Julius Caesar's name actually came from an ancestor born through this procedure, meaning he was named after the operation, and not the other way around.
7. Call the Police Five-O is taken from the show Hawaii Five-O
If you're familiar with street slang, you know that "Five-O" refers to the police. So the question is, why? What does Five-O have to do with the police? The answer lies in Hawaii, or at least in its fictional version. The series Hawaii Five-O dates back to 1968 and was one of the first popular police procedurals.
Throughout the 70s the term "Five-O"« became popular slang for police officers and still persists in some circles. It helps that the series was remade and is still shown on television. But unlike some police jargon that makes its way onto television, including police codes for crimes like the infamous "« 187 »", which was supposedly the Los Angeles police code for murder, Five-O meant nothing. So the show was source of the term . I didn't borrow this from real-life police or even pop culture. In the show, it simply refers to the unit the police worked in at the 50th Precinct, as well as a reference to Hawaii being the 50th state.
6. Soy sauce is not named after soybeans.
The fact that we know soybeans and soy sauce exist seems to connect the dots. And it's perfectly logical, based on common sense, that soy sauce is made from soybeans, hence its name. But we can't make assumptions when it comes to the origins of words. Soy sauce isn't named after soybeans. Instead, soybeans got their name from soy sauce, which was the first to use the word.
Soy sauce has its roots in China, but the name is Japanese. Soy or shoyu — These are Japanese terms for sauce, derived from the Chinese shi-yu. Does this mean that soybeans are shoyu beans? Not at all. In Japanese soybeans are called daizu .
John Locke wrote about soy sauce, which he translated into Dutch as saio, which eventually evolved into soy sauce and then soy sauce. Since the Dutch, and later English speakers, knew the sauce before they knew the beans, the name was reversed, and soybeans evolved from soy sauce.
5. The orange fruit was named before the color.
Over the years, there have been many jokes about the person who first saw an orange growing on a tree and gave it the most uncreative name he could come up with. But rest assured, this story can't be true. The fruit wasn't named after the color; the color was named after the fruit.
The orange fruit originated in England. in the 1300s . It comes from French, which comes from Arabic, which comes from Persian, which comes from the Sanskrit word n?ranga, or orange tree.
Incredibly, the color was not mentioned in the letter. until the 1500s . Before this, people probably simply called everything orange "yellow-red." Once the fruit became widely available, its description became simpler. In fact, very few languages have a specific term for the color orange, rather than a mixture of yellow and red.
4. The Canary Islands are not named after birds.
Canaries are known for several things, including their yellow color, known as canary yellow, their song, and their use to test air safety in mines. There's even a chain of islands named after them, but they're not named after the birds. The birds were named after the islands. The islands were named after dogs.
The original name of the islands was I nsula Canaria, which means "Island of Dogs." It has the same root as the word "canine." The Romans, for unknown reasons, called it the Island of Dogs. Legend has it that the island's native inhabitants worshiped dogs. But it's also possible that the population of monk seals, which the Romans called sea dogs , was responsible for this. Thus, the birds were named either after dogs or after seals.
3. Good, a derivative of OK
The word "OK" is common in English and even other languages. You can say "OK" to express agreement. It's a reliable way to describe how you feel, and it works well with sarcasm and displeasure if your tone is correct. But it can be confusing if you think of it as "OK," as in the letters O and K combined, and as the four-letter word "OK," spelled "OK." Why the difference?
Although it seems counterintuitive, the two-letter version is the original word, as is. The four-letter version was developed later. English is full of abbreviations and contractions, so it seems like the four letters could be shortened to a two-letter word, since they sound phonetically the same.
The two-letter OK is considered a phonetic abbreviation for «everything is correct,» which as a joke could be translated as "« everything is correct ». Around this time, Martin Van Buren was running for president and using his nickname, Old Kinderhook, in slogans urging everyone to «Vote for OK ».
Several decades passed before the four-letter "okay," a phonetic extension of the original term, appeared on the scene.
2. Bikini is named after Bikini Atoll.
The bikini remains one of the most popular swimsuit designs ever created, and it's now nearly 80 years old. Some consider it scandalous, others sexy, but it was designed to make a splash when a French designer introduced the two-piece. in 1946 . Of course, there had been plenty of two-piece swimsuits and other garments long before then—bikinis are little more than bras and panties, after all—but the idea of someone wearing such things in public in that place and at that time in history caused a stir. Plus, they gave it a name people are sure to remember: the bikini.
The swimsuit's name didn't come out of nowhere. It comes from Bikini Atoll, which had a name long before the two-piece suit was invented. The atoll was famous, or perhaps infamous, for its nuclear weapons testing. It was here was dropped for testing 23 nuclear devices . But when the bikini was released, these tests had only just begun, meaning the terrifying and terrifying power of nuclear weapons was entirely new. No one had ever seen anything like it before, and at the time, no one knew the consequences. They just knew it was big. So the bikini capitalized on this sense of awe. It was, if you will, a bombshell among swimsuits. Something explosive and unprecedented.
1. The word "escalation" comes from escalators
Almost every major shopping mall in the world has a feature that many other types of buildings lack: an escalator. Offices, like apartment buildings, typically use elevators. But escalators are quite limited in their capabilities. Escalators work best in spaces with plenty of space and lots of people. Unlike elevators, they don't require waiting and have no capacity restrictions. So they work well in places like shopping malls or, perhaps, airports and stadiums. And what does an escalator do? It escalates! Sort of.
The name itself suggests that it's a device that escalates. The English language works in a way that can help you distinguish words. Anything ending in -or or -er is often a noun, demonstrating the action of a verb. A runner runs. A driver steers. It's not a hard and fast rule, but it's a good guide. And since escalate is a word, in this case it makes sense.
With all that said, the word "escalation" only exists because of escalators. It dates back to 1922 and is reverse formation from the word escalator. The word simply means to rise or reach using an escalator. Only in recent years corporate speech has taken hold of this word, and you'll find it used when customer service needs to escalate your problem to a manager. It's also used to describe the tension that escalates during wartime, and both sentiments have been adapted to the simple act of standing on moving steps.