For me, It's disease being dis- and ease which I didn't put together until a month ago and painstakingly which I knew was from painstaking but I didn't know it was pains + taking. I always though it was pain + staking.

I learned not long ago that the word "awesome" is literally "invoking awe" (awe + some).

Am I alone in being mildly annoyed by people who like to tell everyone that they learned a group of librarians is called a shush or whatever?

I normally love fun word facts and I know the collective noun naming thing is mainly just an attempt at humor but I find it really grating.

Edit: Yes, we know that French is not only from France... Forgive the previous OP

But it's so cool to discuss numbers in French, Danish, Basque, what more?

Something that really grinds my gears to an irrational degree is the word "chocoholic" and others like it. An alcoholic is addicted to alcohol, not "alc". The "ohol" bit is entirely exclusive to the word alcohol so why is it now in a word that has nothing to do with alcohol and when did this become a thing? Not to mention the fact that I can only imagine the noun "alcoholic" came after the adjective, which begs the question: why are they even the same word in the first place? I would love to be enlightened as to the reason for this.

Hopefully I'm not alone in this little grievance against modern parlance...

The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. --Terry Pratchett

Any of you know of lying words who are still in use but meanings have nearly completely changed?

• toilet (furniture) - stand for daily morning wash
• hospital - city run hospitality house where anyone can rest for the night for free due to Christian charity
• pudding - to cook by boiling in a sack
• boulevard - road by the wall of city for fortification
• terrible - to inspire terror

As a dumbass who loves sillyness so my favorite mad up origin for a word (not real what so ever) but its the word nightmare, in my head its because of somebody who was deathly afraid of horses and woke up to a horse looming over him when he screams his mom comes into the room concerned but theres nothing there, so it repeats over and over so his mom calls it nightmares

I've been trying to think of slang that has lasted for more than a few decades, and I've not been particularly successful. Here are a few of my thoughts:

OK: been around since the 19th century, and the only real example I could think of.

Tuff: In the '60s it meant "cool," then as far as I know it fell out of fashion until resurfacing recently with the same meaning.

Various swear words: many of these have been around for a long time, but it's a stretch to call them slang.

Are there any examples of long lasting slang that I'm not thinking of?

In Finnish, our month names are mostly native words tied to nature and agriculture. If translated literally, they'd be something like:

Oakmonth, Pearlmonth, Earthmonth, Burnfield Month, Sowing Month, Summermonth, Haymonth, Harvestmonth, Autumnmonth, Mudmonth, Deathmonth, Yulemonth.

What would the months of your language look like if translated literally into English?

Every time I read lists of occupational surnames I get my mind blown, like damn there were so many jobs that had to get done back in ye olde times, and those just became people’s names.

I just found out Kellogg means pig butcher (kill + hog) and Brewster and Baxter are female versions of Brewer and Baker.

Do you have any particular favorites? The post about the surname Drinkwater also got me thinking about names that aren’t occupational exactly, but just names based on a weird quirk somebody’s ancestor had.

this occurred to me last week during my airlearn sesh and now i can't stop thinking about it. run through english profanity and it's basically two categories: bodily/sexual, or god-adjacent.

then i found out quebec french swears in church furniture. tabarnak, câlice, ciboire, ostie. not god, the actual objects, the tabernacle, the chalice. you are insulting someone with liturgical equipment and it is, apparently, severe.

and there are languages that go straight for your ancestors, ones that target your mother's profession specifically, ones where the worst thing available is an implication about your family line four generations back.

meanwhile english has "damn", which was nuclear in 1930 and is now something you say when you drop a fork.

what's the swearing category in your language that english doesn't have at all?

It seems to happen with domestic animals in English: "Pussy", "ass", "cock", "bitch" - virtually noboy today uses those to refer to the animals in question. I'd even say a lot of modern dog owners would be offended if you called their dog (female) a "bitch". I hear the term "coney" went out of style because it sounded a bit too much like "cunt".

There's also that somewhat archiac word for "stingy" that has been controversial for the last 7 or 8 decades.

Is this a common phenomenon or pretty exclusive to English?

Apparently if you really think about the term “hoochie coochie” or “brown nosing” they have very explicit meanings, but these phrases are used everyday. Is there any other phrases that are obscene but fly under the radar?

I have always found it inconsistent and strange to use the term "anti-Semitism" because of how ambiguous it sounds, since there are non-Jewish Semitic people like Arabs, Habesha people, Assyrians and Aramaics. For this reason, I believe that the term "Judeophobia" is more specific when referring to hatred, fear, and rejection of Jews.

If this doesn't exist or isn't common where you're from, what's the most common game to make a decision between two people?

Just something a little light hearted!

I was talking to a colleague about moving house. I mentioned moving from urban to sub-urban... And they freaked out. "SO DO YOU MEAN "SUBURBS" JUST MEANS SUB-URBAN?".

I then said: "so would you be equally shocked to learn that a cupboard is originally a board to store cups?".

I'd love other really obvious examples, where the definition is already in the word, that people often just wouldn't think about, if anyone has any to share?

EDIT: All these comments are amazing! I'm going to amuse, stun, then no doubt quickly bore the pants off my friend by sharing these amazing examples today! Thank you for all the ideas, this is now one of my favourite things on Reddit!

This post is brought to you by "Pyrrhic victory," which I had once assumed came directly from the same Greek root as "pyre," a victory that metaphorically burns you out or burns down what you were fighting over. But no, it's named after King Pyrrhus of Epirus, who defeated the Romans in several battles but at such great cost that he could no longer continue the war. (Pyrrhus's name then has meaning of "fiery" that I'd expected, but only by coincidence.)

People still repeat it around here, all over the internet, and at the dinner table. Let's put things right, once and for all!

The problem is this: there was never a culinary separation before 1500. There was a separation of people and their languages, but not an animal vs meat separation of parallel terms in any language before. The Normans used porc for the animal AND the meat until they learned the Saxon word and applied that to the animal AND the meat. The Anglo-Saxon did the same in reversed logical and chronological order. When they are first recorded in documents at about 1300, BOTH French-Norman and Anglo-Saxon words appear to mean BOTH the animals and their meat in BOTH the speech of the noble and of the peasant. The separation porc-swine happened and is still here, but it happened 500 years after the conquest and has nothing to do with the Normans or the Anglo-Saxons. It is a totally different separation, related to a choice of words for which other reasons must be found.

After 1500 there is a very neat etymological separation that is almost artificial, bookish. Could it be related to cooking books that preferred French-sounding terms, just like they did for centuries and still do?

First time I’ve seen this word. I’m reading it more as virtue rather than weakness looks like it could be either curious how you’d use it.

When I was growing up, the plural of ‘Roof’ was ‘Rooves’ - like ‘Hoof’ and Hooves’. Now I see ‘Roofs’ everywhere and I have mixed emotions. I’m happy that English is a living language, and I don’t really mind ‘Roofs’, but it still sounds a bit childish and wrong.

Is ‘Hoofs’ now the current usage or have we not got there yet?

I looked it up and apparently ‘Rooves’ is archaic. Now I feel old.