Month: March 2010

Categories
Literary Shakespeare

Weird

You may know today’s word as a generalized term for anything unusual, but ‘weird’ also has older meanings that are more specific. ‘Weird’ derives from the Old English noun ‘wyrd,’ essentially meaning ‘fate.’

By the late 8th century, the plural ‘wyrde’ had begun to appear in texts as a gloss for ‘Parcae,’ the Latin name for the Fates — three goddesses who spun, measured, and cut the thread of life. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Scots authors employed ‘werd’ or ‘weird’ in the phrase ‘weird sisters’ to refer to the Fates.

William Shakespeare adopted this usage in Macbeth, in which the ‘weird sisters’ are depicted as three witches. Subsequent adjectival use of ‘weird’ grew out of a reinterpretation of the ‘weird’ in Shakespeare.

Categories
Literary

Waste of Air Space

Originated from Nietzsche, the Superman (Essay)

Categories
Life Oddities

Ventriloquist

The word is a Latin derivation from two words ‘venter’ and ‘loqui’ meaning ‘speaking from the stomach’.
Ventriloquists were almost like shamens in the early days. They would produce voices of spirits and ghosts that would possess their body, and speak from inside their stomach.
They did not become entertainers until a few hundred years later.

Categories
Everyday Life

Two-bit

The first definition of ‘two-bit’ makes its etymology obvious: it is derived from the noun ‘two bits.’ However, ‘two bits’ is an interesting phrase because it actually means ‘the value of a quarter of a dollar.’

There is no such thing as a single bit, at least not anymore. The now obsolete Spanish dollar was composed of eight reals, or eight bits, so a quarter of the dollar equaled two bits.

The phrase ‘two bits’ carried over into U.S. usage, though there’s no bit coin in U.S. currency.

‘Two bits’ first appeared in print in English in 1730 (and later developed the figurative sense of ‘something of small worth or importance’), followed in 1802 by its adjectival relative. These days, though, the adjective has far surpassed the noun in popularity.

Categories
Life Oddities

Thug

The word originated from India describing a band of ruthless bandits in the hills of India. These mythical bandits wore yellow (or orange) bandana which they used to strangle unsuspecting travelers. The ‘hugghi’ only kill their victims by this way.
During British occupation, the British soldiers decided to erradicate the ‘thugghi’. They found thousands of bodies burried by them. From that point on, the word ‘thug’ was used to describe someone who is ruthless.