Rhyme and reason

Have you ever tried to find words that are quite absurd in nature or sound ridiculous to say?

No, me neither. But I do sometimes think about the origin of a word, not that I ever really feel inspired enough to look up its exact source.

Though, it remains true that as languages develop and phrases are used in a certain context, words inevitably evolve and new words are added.

For instance, Old English has at least some roots in Anglo Saxon and Germanic terms used in farming, survival and everyday life; the 1066 Norman conquest meant French became the language of the ruling class, giving us vocabulary for law, dining, and prestige; not to mention Latin and Greek roots, prefixes, and suffixes used to coin complex scientific, medical, and philosophical terms.

‘Loanwords’ are quite interesting – adapted from travelling tribes such as Vikings, e.g. window or sky, evolved through trade and exploration or different cultures interacting, e.g. shampoo, avocado and jeans, or words named after people or places, e.g. sandwich.

Some words have evolved in meaning through a semantic shift, for example the word ‘weird’ changing from ‘fate or destiny’ to bizarre.

But my favourite is authorisms, i.e. phrases that were invented by authors such as William Shakespeare that have stuck in popular vocabulary, e.g. wild-goose chase (Romeo and Juliet), Good riddance (Troilus and Cressida) and Heart of Gold (Henry V).

At the end of the day, we can be fixed in our believes and fight for the rules of language until the cows come home (the phrase, first recorded in the 1500s, by the way), but it will always do whatever it wants anyway. Trying to keep English from evolving is like trying to herd fluent, yet sarcastic cats.

On that note, I’m going to stop this blog post here before the internet invents three new tenses and a new punctuation mark.

Until next time, may your words be original and your syntax slightly questionable.