Questions tagged [historical-change]
For questions about how the English language has changed over time.
368 questions
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Why do "economic" and "economical" coexist with distinct meanings, while "dramatical" has largely disappeared? [duplicate]
I am trying to understand the logic behind English adjectives ending in -ic versus -ical.
There seems to be a category of words where both forms exist and are accepted, but they have evolved to mean ...
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'Adjective + of noun' vs 'adjective + to-infinitive'
Easy/difficult... of accomplishment / to accomplish
Cannot find much info about this change of trend in current English. It seems to apply only to certain noun-verb pairs (compare easy... *of failure /...
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Why do “inconsolable” and “uncomfortable” have such different meanings?
The words comfort and console can in some circumstances be used synonymously:
She comforted him after the loss of his job.
She consoled him after the loss of his job.
However, while the words ...
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Blond hair and Fair hair
Is there any difference between blond and fair with regards to hair?
Online forums say that there is no particular difference between them and we can use them interchangeably. Chat GPT says that all ...
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Why do so many 3-letter verbs that go consonant-vowel-T conjugate the same in both past tenses as present tense?
Following the pattern of live / lived / I had lived, we have:
Base (infinitive)
Simple Past
Past Perfect
put
put
I had put
set
set
I had set
let
let
I had let
cut
cut
I had cut
hit
hit
I had hit
bet
...
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Origin of the proverb "There is a lid for every pot"
There is a lid for every pot is a saying that essentially means "There is someone for everyone", most commonly used in the context of romantic relationships. Variations include "Every ...
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Is it possible that most cot-caught merged speakers in the USA have a natural rounded merger with /ɒ/?
Is it possible that most cot-caught merged speakers in the USA have a natural rounded merger with /ɒ/ and that they use /ɑ/ only when trying to emulate the "classical General American" cot-...
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How would "notes" and "thoughts" rhyme back then?
Back when the Great Vowel Shift was supposedly over, William Wordsworth penned the following lines:
I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when ...
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Why was never contracted to ne'er?
This question is inspired by the same poem of Byron's as this one. The third line of the excerpt seems to have originally been written as:
To guard those relics ne'er to be restored.
This is ...
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Were double consonants pronounced at some period of history?
One of the things that makes me wonder is why English has double consonants which are pronounced as single, like ‘ff’ (buffer, stiff), ‘ll’ (allow), ‘mm’ (hammer), ‘nn’ (dinner), ‘ss’ (-ness, floss) ...
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What do Strunk and White discuss in The Elements of Style concerning the terms "to-day," "every one," and other compound words?
What is this section of The Elements of Style discussing?
Write to-day, to-night, to-morrow (but not together) with hyphen.
Write any one, every one, some one, some time (except the sense of formerly)...
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Looking for term to describe a line of lights and optional glass panes that border the underside of building canopies
Some historical buildings include a canopy at the entrance to protect vehicles and/or entering and exiting pedestrians from the elements. In some cases, this canopy is bordered by a number of lights e....
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Math but stats for studies?
Any ideas why Americans say Math but Stats, for these two subjects of study - mathematics and statistics? I know medical use of 'stat' is from latin with different sense.
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Has "shut" ever meant "open"? (Bear with me, please)
I'm an English language/literature student in a non-English speaking country. As a final project for a literary translation course, my class is taking turns to translate some of the fairy tales ...
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How did "dream" become a verb without the same thing happening to "nightmare"?
You can say I had a dream and you can say I had a nightmare. But then you can say He is dreaming, yet you cannot say He is nightmaring....you have to say He is having a nightmare.
Why is that? How did ...
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what happened to the BrE ɒ vowel {got /ɡɒt/ (British English)) in American English?
it seems to have split into
ɑː father /ˈfɑːðə(r)/ and ɔː saw /sɔː/
has the Cot-caught merger in American English obscured the original rules by which the split occurred?
EDIT: this is not just a ...
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Would the Persian equivalent of Anglo/Franco/Russo… be Persico? (from the Latin Persicus) Can I write “Persico-Egyptian”
In my paper I am talking about something which refers to both Egypt and Persia, so to make it short I first thought it should be “Perso-Egyptian” but sometimes it's not as simply as that, like “Luso” ...
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Use of the word "tongue" to refer to a specific language
One of the meanings of the word "tongue" is "language". The word is still in use in certain expressions ("mother tongue" being one of them), and I know that in the past, ...
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How did we come to use at, on, in for time as we do now?
Contact me at 5 o'clock on a Monday in the new year
There are many resources which explain the rules about which preposition to use for time phrases to English learners, e.g.
We use at with: with ...
user163011
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Etymology of Mecca
Most dictionaries just list it as "from Arabic", with the better ones providing the script مكة or a transcription showing that it's actually pronounced Makkah in classical and modern ...
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Grammatical Coherence in Hanna Arendt's Writing [closed]
I've recently come across a quote by Hanna Arendt in her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil that looked quite interesting:
"It is in the very nature of things ...
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History of "Featherstonehaugh"
How did the surname "Featherstonehaugh" acquire its modern pronunciation /ˈfænʃɔː/, in spite of regular English sound changes?
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Up until when did pronouncing the "wh" digraph as just "w" was considered substandard speech?
Just read this on Quora:
Yes, it is true that historically, pronouncing the "wh" digraph as
just "w" was considered substandard speech in English.
The question is: when, exactly, ...
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When and where did 'hospice' in the sense of 'palliative care facility or program for the terminally ill' originate in English?
Merriam-Webster's Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, first edition (1898) has this entry for hospice:
Hospice, n. {F., fr. L. hospitium hospitality, place where strangers are entertained, fr. hospes ...
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"died at New York" [duplicate]
While doing archival work I bumped into a few instances where the awkward verbiage "died at New York" appeared. Research using Google Books led me to these examples from over a century ago:
...
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When did the word 'palatable' start being used for not-related-to-food things?
I'm trying to trace back the etymology of 'palatable', but what I'm really looking for is the process of semantic expression over time. When did the word begin to be used to speak of things unrelated ...
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Why is a conservatory called that?
Conservatory is defined as greenhouse, glass house, or hothouse. Where does this meaning come from?
According to Etymonline, conservatory originally meant "a preservative" in the 1560s, and ...
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Are 'biggity' and 'briggity' kin?
(Motivated by the question How common is "biggety" in Southern and Midland US?)
The DARE entry for briggity has the following (edited):
briggity: (also brickaty, brickety, brigaty, ...
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Did all cats used to be feminine?
I have always believed --- from somewhere --- that in archaic English, cats were always referred to using feminine pronouns, regardless of what sex they actually were. But I thought to go and find a ...
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Is Erich Fromm's claim that the extended use of "have" corresponds to the rise of the market economy and Protestantism accurate?
In the book To Have or to Be Erich Fromm claims using "have" in English increased due to the rise of the market economy and Protestantism. Where one is alone in the market, with their ...
user488608
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Why did "pigeon" replace the native word "culver"?
Pigeon is a borrowing from Anglo-Norman where the etymons are French pigon, pigeon. The earliest citation is found in Middle English, from 1375 per OED:
1375
Thomas Blont..hath indowed Dame Isabell.....
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Was the o in "go" and oe in "toe" pronounced differently in early 19th century Gloucestershire English?
No modern dialect makes the <o> and <oe> distinction, but when reading Medhurst's Hokkien dictionary of 1832 i came across (page 34)
Furthermore, <o> seems to be a monophthong and &...
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Why do people say a dog is 'harmless' but not 'harmful'?
I'm not asking if people consider dogs dangerous or not, I'm asking about how the words 'harmless' or 'harmful' are used.
Did the distinction on how the words are used arise at some point? One could ...
user485923
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Eighteenth-century pronounciation of "wax"
In "Against Idleness and Mischief"(1715) ("How doth the little busy bee"), Isaac Watts rhymes "wax" and "makes".
Were these two words pronounced the same at the ...
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How did "oxen" (plural of "ox") survive as the only plural form with the Old English plural ending -en?
Oxen is a rare exception in English where it is the only common English word that retains the original Old English plural ending -en. (Note: Children and brethren are formed a bit differently, please ...
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What would 'ent'/'eont' be in Modern English? [closed]
Based on typical changes, what would the Middle English word 'eont', derived from the Old English 'ent', have become in Modern English, if this word had survived?
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Is there a documented merger or split responsible for whether or not people treat lair and layer as homophones, and if so, what is it called?
Discovered a weird bit of pronunciation distinction in friends today, between three words:
lair (as in home to monster)
layer (as in levels of a cake)
layer (as in "one who lays things down"...
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What is a "pussy" when the word is used to describe a piece of British Army uniform in 1939?
I am currently transcribing and sharing my grandparents WW2 correspondence between 1939 and 1945.
My question is in relation to this letter written on November 24th 1939.
On page 3 my grandfather ...
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Origin and evolution of the proverb "A closed mouth catches no flies"
"A closed mouth catches no flies" is a proverb, and the origins of proverbs are almost always strange and murky; I'm not really expecting a definitive answer here. Wiktionary attributes the ...
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In Indian English, did the word 'griffin' ever mean newcomer or novice?
I recently came across a definition in the dictionary Hobson-Jobson. It's basically a big collection of English words and anglicizations used or found in India. The entry that's been stumping me is ...
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Usage of "high school" and "secondary school" in British Columbia
I grew up in British Columbia, Canada. In the area where I grew up (Greater Vancouver), the school system was generally separated into elementary and high school, with elementary starting at ...
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History of "via"
I was wondering about different ways of writing "via" when a graph of this word's usage showed up.
There is a peak in the years 1529-32 and then a sudden decline then again a peak at 1632 ...
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Why do some irregular verbs, such as swing/swung and sting/stung, only have two forms instead of three?
Folks, my question has to do with really difficult things to understand, so I've chosen this forum and think only truly wise owls are able to help me.
As you, I hope, know, lots of English irregular ...
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"Tranche" as synonym for "collection"
Recently there have been a tranche (:/) of news articles referring to a "tranche of documents" found in Donald Trump's possession. Most dictionaries, e.g., Merriam-Webster
a division or ...
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Why are long e and o most prone to be diphthongised by English speakers?
As a teacher of languages, it has struck me how English vowels love not just diphthongs, but even triphthongs, and this tendency presents itself in how native English speakers generally tend to ...
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Are "orange" and "ginger" synonymous (cat color)?
I recently watched a movie A street cat named Bob, where the cat was described as ginger cat.
I thought the color of the cat is described as orange, too. (confirmed with google image search)
The ...
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How did "ought" lose its original usage as the past tense of "owe"?
Ought is originally the past tense of owe (v.). It appears that this usage is retained in Scottish and in some dialects of English. The current use of ought in standard English is a modal auxiliary (...
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Emergence of “got it sorted”
I grew up in England (in the Midlands, in the 1960s) and if there was some issue or confusion that I had successfully resolved, I would have said “I sorted it out”, or “I got it sorted out”.
I haven’t ...
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Why did English start verbalizing Latin past participles, not keep nativizing infinitive suffixes like it used to do to French verbs? [closed]
The way English adapted French verbs used to be quite straightforward: swap the French infinitive suffixes with Middle English -en:
Latin crīdāre > Old French crier > Middle English crien (13th ...
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How did -ing become a suffix for both present participles and nouns derived from verbs?
In non-modern and non-Middle-English Germanic languages, present participles and nouns derived from verbs look and sound very different:
English: wend - wending - wending
Middle English: wenden - ...
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