Historical Linguistics

From ‘Meat’ to ‘Flesh’: Semantic Narrowing

Have you ever wondered why candy is sometimes called a "sweetmeat", or why we "starve" from hunger but the word's…

1 week ago

Roman Wax Tablets: The Ancient iPad

Long before the iPad, the Romans mastered mobile communication with the "tabula"—a reusable wax tablet that functioned as the ancient…

1 week ago

Subitizing: Counting Without Words

Humans possess an innate ability called "subitizing", which allows us to instantly recognize quantities up to four without counting. This…

1 week ago

Polysemy vs. Homonymy: One Word, Many Meanings?

While "Bank" (river) and "Bank" (money) sound identical by pure historical accident, "Foot" (body) and "Foot" (mountain) share a deep…

1 week ago

The Capital “I”: Ego or Typography?

English is the only major language that capitalizes the first-person singular pronoun "I", a quirk that many assume stems from…

1 week ago

Demonyms: Why Citizens of Liverpool are Scousers

Why are people from Liverpool called Scousers, while residents of Manchester are Mancunians? From Roman forts to Norwegian stews, this…

1 week ago

Macaronic Verse: Medieval Bilingual Humor

Long before Spanglish or modern code-switching, medieval monks and rebellious scholars created "Macaronic Verse"—a comedy genre that mixed high-status Latin…

1 week ago

The ‘Dot That Died’: Hangul’s Lost Vowel

The Korean alphabet, Hangul, is praised for its scientific design, but it once held a secret: a lost vowel called…

2 months ago

How Dr. Seuss Invented ‘Nerd’

Where did the word 'nerd' come from? The answer lies not in a dusty dictionary, but in the whimsical pages…

2 months ago

The Treaty That Had Two Meanings

New Zealand's founding document, the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, exists in two languages—but it tells two different stories. A crucial…

2 months ago

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