Missourced Imports
It was not until my 10th year in Japan that I noticed "honcho" to be from Japanese and not Spanish. To offset that, every movie ever made mocks Chinese people with "ahso", despite that being pure...
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I always thought the next line was "bushy bushy Vaughn hairdo", until I just looked it up (merci DW from me too). Figured it was some old referent before my time...like the oft-quoted Woody...
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Do "savvy" and "parley" strike anyone else as Yankee butcherings of their French counterparts? I realize they aren't all that new...and came thru messy routes (Creole, Middle English, Portuguese...),...
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From "Noble Surfer", on the same album:"...Huraches on his feet,Bushy hair on his head..."
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As far as missourced or obscured imports go, these are hard to top!! Courtesy of americandialect.org...home also of the amazing Words of the Year lists ("wall humping"?!):Gnaw Bone, IN was originally...
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Well well well well well...tonight's Seinfeld ("The Millenium") had Elaine, Kramer, and I think Jerry, tossing the word "huarache" around. I cannot say as I had ever noticed this before, but when...
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In trying to find that list of geographic names which have been switched around backwards (Vermont thread), I noticed that www.americandialects.org has upd...Read More
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Make that www.americandialect.orgGuess we've only got ONE in the US! (Kinda puts the kibosh on Eliza's thread....)
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Use google, and include site:pub55.ezboard.com in the search keys. To read an item, click on 'cached' because the original will probably be gone (apparently ezboard trashes all but the most recent...
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You make it too complicated, jk, just add "wordorigins" to the search. Hasn't failed me yet.In this case, tho, it is the American Dialects BBS (archives) that I'm trying to search. There was a post...
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I have also one, although not in english (excuse me), it's the spanish word "bigote" that means moustache* (mostacho in spanish).Well this "bigote" originally meant "by God" in swiss-german (bi Gott)....
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I wouldn't put too much faith in that story. The OED says "origin unknown" but provides a largish discussion of various theories. The closest it comes to the above story is this:"Whether the Sp....
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I need to know orgin and meaning of typhoon, hurricane, monsoon, and tornado for science classThank you David
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Don't know the origin of the others but Typhoon is pretty straightforward. It's direct lift from the Japanese meaning literally "Big Wind" (the character read -phoon is more commonly read -kaze in...
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Of all the people to drop the ball on this one, AD!! Boy, you really woke me up this morning!For starters, Japanese doesn't even HAVE the word. It is "taifuu" -- as I'm sure you know -- and I cannot...
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The article in Webster's Dict. of Eng. Usage is most enlightening on this word. I'm citing from memory, but the gist of the article is this: "forte" (strong point) does indeed come from French but its...
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(Note: this topic harks back to p. 1, and refers not to the musical term, but to the French-derived term meaning "area of strength or expertise".)Note that I do not insist on pronouncing all loanwords...
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